The New Jersey Devils need as much offense from their stars as possible this offseason. GM Tom Fitzgerald was unable to clearly upgrade the top six, and it appears the Devils will still need to try multiple options to pair with Jack Hughes-Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier-Timo Meier. The two top lines have two clear forward connections, but outside of that, nothing is clear.
Dawson Mercer probably gets the first shot at one of those spots, and veteran Ondrej Palat will get a look after he spent most of last season there, but players like Arseniy Gristyuk, Paul Cotter, Evgenii Dadonov, Stefan Noesen, and Connor Brown could get a look.
Most Devils fans wanted to see an upgrade on the top six, but with Luke Hughes still unsigned and only $6.1 million in cap space, it’s safe to say this is the forward group going into the season. With that being the case, we need those four stars up front to do their best work.
Jack Hughes will do that by just staying healthy. Nico Hischier just needs to repeat his offense from last season. Jesper Bratt must stay at this level of value, and he’ll be fine. The one we need to play much better than last season is Timo Meier.
Meier finished last season with 26 goals and 27 assists. It’s not a terrible season, especially considering he had four points in five playoff games, but it has left much to be desired. He was inconsistent with his scoring, and at times, he looked like he was in a slump.
His season was on pace to be a flat-out disaster. Meier had 38 points at the end of February, a month where he literally got one point.
Then, we were reintroduced to March Meier. Timo Meier had seven goals in the month of March, and he continued that trend in April and through the playoffs.
What would happen if March Meier was just who Timo Meier was for a full season?
What causes Meier to be a superstar in March is still a mystery. Maybe he’s part Irish or something. It has us wondering what might happen if Meier provided his March value all season. What would that look like?
We took Meier’s last two Marches and averaged them out on a per-game basis. He had 20 goals in 31 games between 23-24 and 24-25. Stretching that out over 82 games would give him 53 goals in a season. His final line would be 53 goals and 77 points.
Meier definitely has the skills to score more than 50 goals in a season. He’s already scored 40 in a season, but jumping to 50 is a stretch. However, if we get March Meier all season, that’s what we’re expecting. Even if he’s just 2025 March Meier, he would still score 36 goals, which would be a huge win for the Devils. They need Meier to get to that this season. It could be key to hitting their ceiling this season.