Since the Four Nations, the Devils have been very hot and cold in their three games. One of the forward lines, the one with Erik Haula and Paul Cotter, however, has simply been ice cold, and that needs to change.
In the three games since returning from the Four Nations break, Erik Haula and Paul Cotter have played on the same line for the New Jersey Devils. In the first game against Dallas, they mostly played on a line with Dawson Mercer, but in the last two games, Mercer was replaced with Nathan Bastian. It is definitely a bottom 6 line no matter which of those two plays, although Mercer does bring some more skill and finesse while Bastian is a bigger, more defensive body on the ice.
Nonetheless, regardless of the third guy, through three games, that line has been really, really bad. There is no other way to describe the numbers coming from that line. When you open up the game stats for each of the three previous games, what you will see for the on-ice stats are pretty stark and not in a good way for these guys. Check them out thanks to Natural Stat Trick:
So the italicized stats are for the player that was not really part of that line for that game. So for the Dallas game, Bastian’s stats are italicized as he played with Tomas Tatar and Curtis Lazar. Then in the other two games, Mercer’s stats are like that as he was elsewhere.
As you can see, these stats are quite poor overall. Haula’s stats especially are jarring, as only one of the six stats from those games is above 30%, and only two of the six are above 20%. It is tough to get much worse than that in terms of possession and expected goals, especially when one game was a 5-0 victory. Cotter’s stats were slightly better across those three games than Haula’s, but they were very bad too considering you want to be above 50% in all of them.
Bastian’s stats are particularly interesting. In the one game playing with Tatar and Lazar, he dominated, with really strong possession and expected goal numbers. He played a very strong game against Dallas. Then, he was moved to play with Haula and Cotter and fell apart. His numbers are 3-4x worse in the two more recent games playing on that line versus the Dallas game. The number change is not as stark for Mercer, but it is still prevalent. Mercer’s numbers without Haula and Cotter are decent, if not amazing, but they were very poor in the Dallas game.
This is obviously a problem and one that Sheldon Keefe and Co. will need to figure out quickly. The way this line has played in the last three games, it is like the Devils are playing shorthanded. They are playing three lines while the fourth line is a complete liability. That is not a winning formula and cannot continue. You do not need all four lines scoring regularly and dominating, but you need them all to at least be competitive night in and night out, but NJ is not getting that right now. This line has not played competitively at all.
This is especially problematic considering Haula is signed through next season still at a $3.15 million cap hit. It is not a true albatross contract as it doesn’t last beyond next year, but unless he picks up his game and plays more like he did in the past, he will be a black hole in this lineup for the short term, one that cannot remain if this team wants to go beyond the early rounds of the playoffs. It is a very small sample size, so I am not pushing for anything drastic right now, but something does need to change, and soon. It will be interesting to see how the team addresses this moving forward.