If The Devils Want to Win, They Must Recall Simon Nemec and Shake Up the Lines

The Devils have repeatedly struggled to score goals since the Christmas break. With no trade options, the Devils should look to their best internal option to provide more offense.

If you have been watching the New Jersey Devils over the last three weeks or so, you are almost certainly unhappy with the team. After a 3-1 loss to the Flyers and a 2-1 loss to the Senators on home ice this weekend, the Devils have thus been reacquainted with fans booing them off the ice. Devils fans might remember last season, when the team fell off a cliff in January and never recovered. Positive minds, however, might point to their horrible December 2022 amid the team’s best regular season in their history. So, where this team goes from here is entirely up to them. Do they crash right out of a playoff spot? Do they become a middling playoff team? Or do they remember how they were playing between October and December and go into the playoffs with confidence?

In their last 11 games, the team is 2-6-3, averaging less than two goals a game during that stretch while being outshot by opponents. This is in complete contrast to the way they played before the Christmas break, when they continually held opponents to tiny shot counts and were not totally incapable of finding the net with their shots. Now, with three out of their last four games being games in which they scored one, allowing two past Markstrom or Allen, the team is in dire need of a shakeup to create more offense.

Step One: Call Up Simon Nemec

Simon Nemec is one talented, talented defenseman. He’s been playing professional hockey since he was 15 years old. As far as I know, that made him the youngest professional hockey player in European history, as Jaromir Jagr was 16 when he made his debut for Kladno. This means, that, at the age of 20, Simon Nemec has played 88 games in the Slovak Extraliga, 103 games in the AHL, and 69 games in the NHL for a whopping 260 professional games. At a certain point, those lower leagues only have so much to offer a top prospect like Simon Nemec, who has more or less mastered that tier of professional hockey. So, it’s time to call him up.

Yes, his recent comments to Tomas Prokop did catch my attention. No, I do not think a trade is likely in the slightest at this point. I took his above quote, which was in response to a question about David Jiricek requesting a trade, to mean that he’s fine to finish most the rest of the year in the AHL, but that future seasons there may result in a trade request.

And honestly? I would too, in his situation. He’s going to play his 300th professional game this season. It should be in the NHL.

I do think that perhaps the Devils should take some notes from how they played last year, as well. See how Brendan Smith quickly establishes the netfront presence, helping create space for Nemec to wire a shot through? Lately, it feels like the Devils only want a goal if they can get it by tic-tac-toeing their way to it. But Nemec would fit and boost their rush style, while having the vision to create plays when the rush is not there. Once in the offensive zone, he’s not going to just stand at the blueline and cede the offensive zone every time there’s a bit of pressure — he can make plays to keep possession.

You may be wondering where Nemec fits into the lineup, but I have no problem with shaking up the defensive pairs, at this point. Over the last 11 games, only Johnny Kovacevic and Jonas Siegenthaler have a positive CF%, though Kovacevic has been rather unlucky with his goal results in that time. Meanwhile, the Hughes-Pesce pairing is the only one to be underwater by expected goals percentage, and they’ve allowed nine goals while seeing the team score only three since the beak. Hamilton and Dillon have fared the best by real goal results, as the only defensemen to be on the ice for the Devils outscoring opponents in this timeframe. So, Dillon’s couple of gaffes aside, that has been the only pairing with positive results since the break. I might not want to see anyone removed from the lineup on defense, but I would like to see Keefe have more in-game options for usage and time on ice distribution. It’s not like 12 forwards deserve ice time at the moment.

A Line Shake

13 forwards have played 20 or more minutes for the Devils over the last 11 team games. Kurtis MacDermid is not one of them. In these games, only five Devils have been on the ice for the Devils breaking even with or outscoring opponents at even strength: Dawson Mercer, Nate Bastian, Nico Hischier, Curtis Lazar, and Timo Meier. Jack Hughes, Ondrej Palat, Stefan Noesen, and Tomas Tatar have seen the team outscored by one. Jesper Bratt has seen the team outscored by two. Paul Cotter and Justin Dowling have been utterly buried, with Cotter seeing the team outscored 8-4 and Dowling sporting a negative 4-1 differential. Cotter has had the best expected goals percentage aside from Erik Haula during this time frame, but defensive breakdowns have been costly on the third line.

This development has worsened over the last four games, with that third line providing zero goals and allowing three at five-on-five. The top six, meanwhile, has totally dried up offensively, with the top two lines providing one goal each over this stretch. Here, you see the hidden value of Erik Haula, who I was frustrated with over a lack of offensive production before his injury. But, without him in the lineup, tough defensive assignments can only go to Nico Hischier, limiting that line’s ability to create offense, as the Hughes line has been sheltered by zone starts (68.42% in the offensive zone) and still unable to score, while the bottom six is not a legitimate option to shut down any opposing scorers with Haula in recovery.

Part of this is mentality. We’ve seen Jack Hughes enter “do it myself” mode over the last few weeks with repeatedly disastrous results. But playing on a line with Jesper Bratt and Ondrej Palat is no place to start falling into those habits. Those two are far too skilled to have their center hold onto the puck too long, skating into traffic, and turning the puck over on the occasions where he does decide to pass. With opponents employing the trap against the Devils now, that is exactly what teams want Jack Hughes to do: don’t take advantage of Palat on the wall, don’t take advantage of Bratt’s speed and cycling ability — skate right into the defense, trying to split through for an open netfront chance. It doesn’t work when they see it coming.

If that line cannot start playing together as they were before the Christmas break, they should be split up. There’s too much offensive talent on that line for it to create so few chances with such a favorable set of zone starts. I think Jesper Bratt should go on his own line with Dawson Mercer, as follows:

Tatar-Hischier-Meier
Palat-Hughes-Noesen
Cotter-Mercer-Bratt
Bastian-Lazar-(empty)

You may be asking: Tatar??? But these are the limitations of this roster. And that line, in a game’s worth of ice time together, has a 70.00 CF% and 76.05 xGF%, outshooting opponents six to one. When Nico and Tatar have played together without Meier, they have outscored opponents three to one with a 52.11 xGF% in 69:57 of ice time — that’s perfectly fine production. If one line isn’t going to bring the offense, the team might as well have three options to score — and moving Tatar up to that spot allows offensive talent to trickle down the lineup.

Giving Hughes another physical netfront option in Noesen may also help to draw attention away from him as a puck carrier. Hughes is fantastic at shooting through screens, and Noesen is the most adept netfront presence on the roster. In 51:21 together, this duo has a 71.00 CF% and 78.77 xGF%, outshooting opponents 38-15. They only broke even in goals, though, as they have a 0.879 PDO in their ice time together. I only do not have much of a record to point to for the Bratt—Mercer combination, who have played a whopping three minutes and 45 seconds together, with the Devils scoring a goal in that limited timeframe.

We are not quite at the point where I call for Dougie Hamilton to play right wing, as Brent Burns did from the 2012-13 to 2013-14 seasons, where he scored 68 points in 99 games, shooting 9.5% with second line minutes. But I do note that those Sharks featured an RHD logjam (Boyle, Demers, Braun, plus Burns) and a lack of true scoring forward options beyond their core group of four top forwards. A full season of Burns at wing allowed those forwards to go from leading a bottom-10 offense to the 6th-ranked in 2013-14, while improving from the 6th-ranked to the 5th-ranked defense.

I still think that, with Erik Haula eventually coming back, there are enough forwards on this team to make this work, hopefully with a deadline rental providing a boost. But, with Haula absent, I see no reason not to run some aggressive Hughes-Nemec or Hughes-Hamilton pairings with the goal of creating more offense for the team, while trying to balance the lineup with an even scoring threat. With how defensively structured the bottom six currently is, the blueline has been too offensively ungifted to make up for Fitzgerald’s roster construction. He probably expected Nemec to be a starting defenseman, with Kovacevic as a seventh guy, before finding out just how good Johnny was. It’s not a bad thing, but the Devils need to be more creative with their blueline as a result of not putting more resources up front in the offseason.

In any case, the Devils cannot keep slipping for much longer, or they’ll find themselves trying to claw back into their playoff spot.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of the idea of calling up Nemec to provide more creativity from the blueline? What do you think of shaking up the forward lines? What do you need to see from the team moving forward? Do you think focusing more on establishing the netfront man would help guys like Jack Hughes score? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.