What is depth scoring?
In John’s post on Friday, responding to the Tom Fitzgerald and Sheldon Keefe end-of-year press conference, he dove into Fitzgerald’s statement about depth scoring. For today’s article, I wanted to poke deeper into that question, determining where the fault lines lie most in the team’s offense. Fitzgerald said in response to one question from the media, “Oh, I think players underachieved, for sure. I think players who have scored enough goals in this league to give assurance that we have depth scoring, didn’t.” For All About the Jersey, John wrote:
Second, this is a point Todd Cordell made and I will echo it, who exactly underachieved for scoring in 2024-25 among the depth forwards? Dawson Mercer may have not taken a step forward as you and I may have liked, but he provided 19 goals in 2024-25 after a season where he put up 20. Ondrej Palat has been a consistent scorer in the 15-goal range and he put up 15 goals in this past season. Erik Haula went down from 16 goals to 11, but he also had more time missing due to injury on top of being terrible after returning from injury. The likes of Tomas Tatar, Justin Dowling, Curtis Lazar, and Nathan Bastian were surely not expected to score double-digit goals and they did not.
Trying to get into Tom Fitzgerald’s head is difficult here, but there is one legitimate gripe in the three players John singled out. Dawson Mercer was just one goal away from his third-straight 20-goal season, but he really should have been more productive given all of the top six and power play ice time he had. Sure, a good chunk of Mercer’s playing time comes on the penalty kill, and he is an all-situations player, but planning for a guy to turn into a 50-60 point guy and having him put up 69 points over the last two years combined can certainly leave a general manager feeling like things are not working out the way they are supposed to.
The real disappointment on offense is Erik Haula. Dropping to 21 points across the whole season, Haula has not had such a worse scoring season since he was in his second year in the league as a 23-year old up-and-comer for the Minnesota Wild. After having 76 points in his first two years as a Devil, Erik Haula looked lost for a great deal of this season, but there were a couple factors at play. The first such factor was Haula’s health, as he missed 13 games (the most he has ever missed in a non-COVID year since he was a rookie) and probably could have sat out a few more. The second factor was Sheldon Keefe’s defense-first system, which Haula seemed to struggle to thrive in for about half the season. Having been brought over in the Pavel Zacha trade, Haula was supposed to be that third-line center or second-line faceoff-taking winger that opens up ice and matchups for the Devils’ top centers. As Alex noted on Saturday, Erik Haula had a much better time in the playoffs, though his line seemed a little unlucky on the goal-scoring front.
I say that Haula was more disappointing than Palat becuase Palat played a career low in minutes per game and still scored 15 goals, well in line with his career average. 15 goals also represents the highest count Palat has achieved in a Devils uniform, and he followed it up with a presence on the team’s only great five-on-five playoff line of Palat-Hischier-Meier. While Palat’s contract sticks out much more than Erik Haula’s, which John foreshadowed yesterday could make him a buyout candidate. However, assuming the team feels Palat can contribute more during the season and in the playoffs, I would be shocked to see him depart in such a manner.
The Defense’s Share of the Blame and Bottom Six Haziness
Another issue — and one the New Jersey Devils can fix without shuffling personnel — is defensemen scoring. Devils defensemen accounted for 31 goals this season, down from 33 in 2023-24 and 48 in 2022-23. A big factor there was Dougie Hamilton scoring 22 goals in the team’s playoff appearance that year, but the Devils also had goals added by Damon Severson (7) and Ryan Graves (8). The Devils may have more defensively reputable players in their places now in Brett Pesce and Brenden Dillon, but there is still a middle-six forward’s worth of goals missing that the defense chipped in (while having similarly dominant defensive results) when they made the second round two years ago. I expect Hamilton’s shot to be improved in his second season after pectoral surgery, so I hope that decline can be reversed in the next season.
However, if it is not reversed, the Devils have to account for those 17 missing goals somewhere. If the team’s blueliners delivered those extra goals this year, the Devils would have ranked 12th in the league, just ahead of the Rangers, in total scoring. Instead, they sat among several mediocre clubs at 20th in the league in goals scored. Not a single team lower than 15th (Panthers) in goals scored is still in the playoffs. Do Arseni Gritsyuk and Lenni Hameenaho project to allow Tom Fitzgerald to move nobody of importance, just shuffling a fourth line in and out to say the team isn’t coming back with the same group? Sure, that might fall in with the “12 players with 10-plus goals” idea of depth scoring that Fitzgerald mentioned in the press conference, but the Devils need to maximize their high-end players. Or, if Sheldon Keefe gets to keep Daniel Sprong, maybe he can utilize those “high-end NHL skills in terms of finishing abilities” to boost the bottom six. Or maybe we’ll have Kurtis MacDermid play 10 games. Who knows?
As it is, the Devils can expand their blueline scoring most through Hamilton, Hughes, and Nemec. Seamus Casey is certainly a threat to score, but his place on the team next year is hard to assume: he will likely play most of the year in Utica. Nemec, however, will have to be more aggressive in transition, taking his own shots as he did in Game Three of the first round. Luke Hughes also sports one of the lower shots-through percentages in the league at just 36.9% of his attempts making it to the net, so he may see an explosion in point production when he learns how to beat defenses and get more rubber to the net. Yes, many defensemen find themselves in the low-40s range, but the less time Luke spends chasing rebounds off shin pads, the better. As long as the Devils have these offensive defensemen playing below their maximum potential, they are a part of the problem and prospective solutions, too.
Can the Top Forwards Be Better?
Aside from Jack Hughes, who was cut off at 62 games played this season, there is one “core” Devil who I think many would point out as someone who needs to be better in 2025-26: Timo Meier. Remember Pavel Zacha, the maligned player referenced earlier in the Erik Haula trade? Meier has eight more points than Zacha since the 2015 sixth overall pick was shipped to Boston for Haula. That is simply not enough.
I do not write this to degrade the year Meier just had. With a new coach, Timo played the most defensively responsible game he has ever put together, stills coring 26 goals. However, he dropped below 10 power play goals for the first time since 2020-21, when he was 24-years old. While Meier was not always on the top power play unit this season, he was there for the most part, anyway, and I think he certainly could have still wired 10 one-timers to the twine. Mind you, Timo had 17 power play goals when he scored 40 in 2022-23. Just by getting back to that level, Meier can take away the need for an extra bottom six scorer.
Final Tidbits and Your Thoughts
To me, there are only a few players who I cannot point out as needing to score more. For the most part, the Devils need to improve internally, and while that is scary in some ways for a team that just got bounced in five games, next year is year two of working with Sheldon Keefe. Next year is another year of the team’s core maturing and becoming more efficient players. Everyone — from top to bottom — can do something differently to chip in a few extra goals to rebuild the team’s attack.
So, pretty much nobody scored enough.
What are your thoughts on the team’s goal-scoring spread? Who are you looking for an improvement in next season? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.