Last season, the Devils had their fair share of shooters. This season, with different personnel, there are fewer shoot-first guys. How will that affect things?
Last season, there were 375 forwards who played at least 500 minutes at 5 on 5 action. The top half of that all averaged at least 6.75 shots per 60 5v5 minutes. The New Jersey Devils had 7 skaters who were in that top half of forwards, which is a quality number all things considered, as the average would be a little fewer than 6 per team.
The problem for this year, however, is that two of those guys are no longer on the team. Alexander Holtz and Tyler Toffoli are both elsewhere, and the Devils really did not replace them in terms of shots per 60. They now have Tomas Tatar and Stefan Noesen, neither of whom were at or above 6.75 shots per 60 at 5 on 5 last year. For reference, here is a chart of the info thanks to Natural Stat Trick:
Jack Hughes is a shooting machine, and Timo Meier is not far behind. Yes, he was almost 2 shots behind last season per 60 minutes, but he was also playing injured for most of the year, and that number could and probably would rise with a full year of being healthy. Bratt is also completely unafraid to shoot at almost 9.5 shots per 60. Outside of them, however, you drop all the way to Erik Haula at 7.59 shots per 60. That is a pretty big drop. Nico rounds out the Devils on the list, just eclipsing 7.
This season, then, the Devils enter with three real shooters in Hughes, Meier, and Bratt, with Haula and Nico playing backup and rounding out the pack. It will be interesting to see how the new coaching staff wants to handle that and how they want to create the forward lines based on that. I think the easiest way to probably look at it is to have Jack Hughes with one of Bratt or Meier and put the other with Nico while putting Haula on the third line to generate some scoring down the lines as well. That spreads out the shooters while giving the top line some extra shooting power with both Hughes and one of Meier/Bratt. Nico is fantastic as an all-around playmaker, so giving him the other shooter makes a strong second line, and you have Haula rounding out the third line for some pop.
Of course, there are a number of other ways to go about it, and we will see how Sheldon Keefe decides to handle things come October, but if he chooses to play Haula on the top 6 along with those other shooters, it really leaves the third line lacking shooters. We have seen the Devils in the past have too many passers and distributors and not enough shooters, and it doesn’t go well. They need some shoot-first options down the lines as well. And with the loss of both Toffoli and Holtz, other guys will need to step up and shoot more too. Will that be from the newly acquired Tatar or Noesen? Or perhaps a resurgence from someone like Dawson Mercer? Only time will tell, but if the Devils do not shoot enough this season, we can see where the lack of shooting came from right here.