The New Jersey Devils‘ offense has been on an entirely different level after returning from the Olympic break. As a team, their 3.69 goals per 60 (GF/60) since Feb. 28 is the fourth-best mark in the National Hockey League (NHL). They’re 10-5-0 during that stretch.
Prior to that date, they scored just 2.43 GF/60 — the worst mark in the league. That’s a ~52% increase in goals scored over the span of a month-plus. What a transformation.
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A huge catalyst for that successful flip-flopping has been the Devils’ top line of Jesper Bratt, Jack Hughes and Connor Brown. The line was formed after Jack, fresh off scoring the Olympic Golden Goal, wanted to play with Brown. Everyone knows “peanut butter and jelly” — Jack’s self-proclaimed nickname for he and Bratt’s connection — but adding Brown to that mix has been one of the best decisions the Devils have made all season. In other words, you can say Brown is the bread, making the PB&J complete.
Top Line Finding Real Success
In their last 10 games, the trio has combined for a whopping 41 points (!!) — 18 from Jack, 13 from Bratt, and 10 from Brown. They aren’t giving much up, either: Per Natural Stat Trick, when they’ve been on the ice together, they’ve owned over 58% of the on-ice goal share.
“Jack is obviously a driving force for our line. He skates the puck through the neutral zone really well and opens up scoring opportunities for the both of us,” Bratt told The Hockey Writers. “Brownie has an extremely high hockey IQ, [he’s] extremely smart, knows how to put himself into the right areas to complement me and Jack’s skating, and I just think that overall together, we’re three really good skaters that win a lot of pucks back and transition fast. I think our transition game has kind of been what makes us successful.”
That transition game has been a sticking point for the Devils as a whole amidst this rapid turnaround. Defensemen are much more active and have been getting the puck up the ice with higher efficacy. In turn, the forwards are finding themselves in better scoring positions.
Team Continuing to Find Positives
It goes without saying that the Devils aren’t where they want to be standings-wise. This offensive outburst doesn’t imply that they don’t have their work cut out for them to improve the roster depth and other areas, where necessary, to become a contender.
But while it could be easy for these pro athletes (getting paid millions) to mentally check out and coast to Game 82, the Devils have done the opposite; they’ve made legitimate improvement. That’s a great sign.
“We’re a very competitive group and it doesn’t really matter at this point how everything is looking in the standings,” said Bratt. “We’re building on to next year and we’re trying to see what character, and what line combinations, everything that works well to move into a great feeling into the next year. And I think that [we’re] obviously seeing that with Jack and Timo [Meier] kind of stepping up and scoring some big goals for us. And other lines are driving as well [which] is obviously positive for us to continue building.”
Bratt’s personal season has been a microcosm of the Devils’ campaign as a whole; while the team struggled to finish more than any other team in the league, Bratt was considered one of the unluckiest players on said team; per NJ Devils Advocates, with just average finishing for him and his teammates during his shifts, he would have an extra ~14 points. That would put him at 75 points in 74 games. It’s exactly why there’s so much more that goes into evaluation than just point totals, but regardless, Bratt has stuck with it and is getting rewarded.
“Obviously, there’s always challenging parts throughout the year. I mean, even last year with good point production, there [were] still stretches during that season it was tougher mentally when pucks weren’t really going well, and then you just got to continue working. There’s no real shortcuts there. You’ve got to put in the work [and] focus on the things that means a lot to you, that helps you out. I have a good team around me that makes sure [to] help me out whenever I need them. And I have a lot of people that I trust, that I know want the best for me, to make me successful. And I’ve been working really hard on it. If you’re a good player, you always find a way and you make it work. A season usually always evens out somehow.”
– Jesper Bratt to The Hockey Writers
Some have chalked the team’s improvement up to simply improved finishing. Believe it or not, they’ve actually finished worse than expected during this span, despite still being comfortably a top-five goal scoring team. Their 3.69 GF/60 has actually come on 3.99 expected goals per 60 minutes. That speaks to the incredible amount of offense they’ve been generating.
Still A Lot of Work To Do
Again, none of this means the Devils don’t have their work cut out for them in the offseason. All season, head coach Sheldon Keefe has been hesitant to give them props whenever the “maturity” narrative has propped up, and rightfully so.
Their ongoing woes against the Carolina Hurricanes, one of the Eastern Conference’s powerhouses, highlights that there’s certainly still mental and emotional hurdles for the team to get over. Take it from Brown himself: “There’s some things that happened throughout the game and some emotions got high and were just handled poorly,” he told NJD.TV following their recent loss. “When you have scars against a team, sometimes it can be that much harder to manage … We have good players. The margins are slim and there’s a couple tweaks between the ears that this club needs to take. I’m very optimistic that we will.”
Furthermore, there’s a lot of defensive improvement to be made. While their offense is tops in the league during this span, their 2.97 goals against per 60 (GA/60) is middle-of-the-pack at 16th.
“I still think if [we] want to be a real team and really grow and have this maturity…there’s areas defensively that we’ve got to address and continue to get better at,” said Keefe. “If you look at just this season, you know we’ve put stretches of really good offense together. We’ve put stretches of really good defense together. We haven’t had enough of a stretch where both were going well at the same time.”
Some have implied that the Devils’ overall surge has been because they’re able to stay looser with the playoffs out of the picture. While that may be true to an extent, that doesn’t propel a team from 32nd in goal scoring to fourth. There has been a legitimate overhaul of how the team plays, and they’re reaping the benefits right now.
While there’s still a mountain for the front office to climb to restore their contender status this offseason, fans can take some solace in knowing the team possesses talent capable of producing amongst the league’s best.
p.s. Everything else aside, when Jack is fully healthy (pre-Chicago incident and post-Olympics), the Devils are 22-11-1. Over a full season, that .662 points percentage would be fifth in the NHL.
