Should the New Jersey Devils Consider Splitting Up Their Top 6 to Balance the Offense?

The New Jersey Devils Bottom 6 forwards have been an offensive black hole as of late. Should the coaching staff makes some line changes to help some of the more stagnant players?

I knew things were rough for the New Jersey Devils Bottom 6 forward group, but I didn’t realize just how rough until this morning. As Nate posted in his Devils in the Details earlier this morning, the Devils Fanatics account on X/Twitter posted a pretty alarming set of stats. No player currently in the Devils Bottom 6 has posted more than six points since November 27th:

I knew things were rough, but those numbers are even worse than I expected. Jared made mention earlier this week of some of the assets the Devils have that they could use to make a trade deadline move, but I agree with his conclusion that we probably won’t see many premium assets moved, and draft picks probably won’t go until closer to the deadline. I’m also not willing to believe that a trade is likely to happen soon, as the Fanatics tweet seems to want. However, something needs to change, as the Devils can’t get by for the rest of the season with just two lines contributing. Could the Devils perhaps look at splitting up the groups that are working?

Forward Change

The Devils Top 6 group currently consists of Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Ondrej Palat, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Stefan Noesen. Of that group, you could make the point that one (Palat) is there for reasons other than offense, as he has fewer points this season than Mercer. So how could we mix this up? How can we divide these six with some of the other available forward to create more balances scoring across three lines? Well, there’s two ideas that came to me for different reasons.

Cotter – Hischier – Meier

Palat – Hughes – Mercer

Bratt – Haula – Noesen

The logic behind this grouping is that it would put one of the big three (Hischier, Hughes and Bratt) as the featured forward on each line. Hischier works well with Meier, so they stay together here while getting Cotter. Not only would this hopefully get Cotter going again, but it could get the Devils a strong, skilled line with some snarl to it. Hughes has been doing a good job making Palat relevant, and Mercer’s hustle could gel well here with a player who is still working hard every shift in Palat and the most talented forward the Devils have in Hughes. Bratt and Noesen, who have both had very strong seasons so far would move onto a line with the ice cold Haula, and perhaps giving him two scoring forwards could at least get Haula on the scoresheet in some way, shape or form.

Cotter – Hischier – Noesen

Palat – Hughes – Mercer

Meier – Haula – Bratt

Some slight changes in version two; the logic behind the Hughes line stays the same here. In this scenario, Hischier stays with Noesen, who has scored a few times off of some nice passes from Nico. There’s still some meanness to this line here as well, which bodes well given how many different matchups Nico’s line typically plays against. Haula still gets two goal scoring forwards to accompany him here as well, however this also allows Bratt and Meier to remain on the wing that they are more familiar with playing in New Jersey. Yes, Timo and Jesper have each played both sides, however Meier has typically been on the left and Bratt on the right since Meier was acquired. I don’t know if anyone (aside from maybe the coaching staff) would argue with putting them on opposite wings than they’re used to if it led to more sustained offense.

But Why?

The key point here is the goal to get, as I said above, more sustained offense. The Devils can’t rely on just five players to shoulder all the point scoring weight; they need the other seven forwards who are dressed every night to chip in at least every other game or so. Again, Mercer is the closest to doing this, but he’s been on a cold streak lately as well. Splitting the high scoring forwards might affect their individual performance (we might not see a 100 point Devils player season this year in this scenario) but could make the team deeper. There are far too many Devils who are in important roles that aren’t living up to their billing right now; spreading out the highest performing forwards could be a way to share the wealth and get some more guys back on the right path.

For those wondering why the fourth line wasn’t included here, well there’s a couple of reasons. The first is the the Devils don’t have so much depth that they can afford to move a high performing player down to the line that plays the fewest minutes. The second is that right now there’s only two lines that are producing offense; we need to work on getting production out of a third line before we worry about a fourth. Progress can and must be made here, but has to be done gradually, rather than all at once.

To Conclude

Some might see this as a knee-jerk reaction to the posted stats, but realistically the Devils have been shut out in six of their 41 contests so far this season. How do you prevent being shut out? Part of it entails having depth scoring so that when teams shut down your most dangerous line or two, there are other players available to step up and shoulder some of the offensive load. The Devils have done well with a top heavy group this season. It might be time, however, to spread out some high end performers and have them balance out some of the underperformers.

What are your thoughts on shaking up the Top 6 to help balance the Bottom 6? Do you think this would benefit the team, or would it wind up being a mistake? Is a call up from Utica or a trade a better solution in your mind? Should the Devils stand pat with their lines and allow players to work through their cold streaks? Leave any and all comments below and thanks as always for reading!