At Timo Meier’s best, he’s a barreling power forward who can run over people in his pursuit of the puck and the net. He fires one-timers, creates rebound after rebound, and is a 30-goal threat. At Timo Meier’s worst, he is a drifter. There does not seem to be a strong point to his game when he’s out of sorts.
Unfortunately for New Jersey Devils fans, they have seen both halves of Timo Meier this season.
In the first 26 games this season, Timo Meier had 10 goals and 12 assists, putting him on track for 32 goals and 38 assists. He had 84 shots on goal and was shooting 11.9%. He had five power play goals and four power play assists. What happened on that 26th game for the New Jersey Devils? That was Brenden Dillon’s original 1,000th game celebration, in which he was jumped and injured by Dmitri Voronkov. After that incident, Timo Meier played four games, scoring one goal before going on a personal leave of absence for a family health matter.
I want to make it clear that my view of Timo Meier this season is very much colored by that leave of absence. I am far more inclined to say this is an unfortunate season and I hope he’s been doing alright than I am to say I think Timo Meier isn’t deserving of his contract and is in decline. But I will point out how his decline in play since leaving the team has affected others around him.
Since returning from his leave of absence, Timo Meier has eight goals and three assists in 34 games, which would put him on track for about 19 goals and 7 assists over a full season. He has put 135 shots on goal, converting on 5.9% of those chances. He has one power play goal and no power play assists. Looking a bit deeper there, this is how the team split in Meier’s power play minutes before and after that December 1 game. For all stats in the bulleted lists below, please see Natural Stat Trick.
First 26 games: 2:30 Meier PP TOI/GP | 66.12 team shots/60 | 9.18 team goals/60 | 11.2 team xGF/60Next 4 games: 2:51 Meier PP TOI/GP | 31.58 team shots/60 | 0 team goals/60 | 4.07 team xGF/60Last 34 games: 1:45 Meier PP TOI/GP | 70.19 team shots/60 | 6.02 team goals/60 | 11.61 team xGF/60
So, the fault in Timo Meier’s drop in power play production since his return from his personal leave of absence is not an absence of chances. Since returning, Timo has actually led the Devils in total individual expected goals per 60 minutes on the power play with 3.89 (he has played just under 60 minutes). He has not hit the net. Here is how each of the top eight forwards by ice time have fared during that time with respect to their goals to individual expected goals (ixG).
Nico Hischier: 7 goals on 7.24 ixG (-0.24)Timo Meier: 1 goal on 3.88 ixG (-2.88)Connor Brown: 2 goals on 3.17 ixG (-1.17)Dawson Mercer: 1 goal on 2.75 ixG (-1.75)Jack Hughes: 3 goals on 1.89 ixG (+1.11)Jesper Bratt: 2 goals on 1.87 ixG (+0.13)Stefan Noesen: 1 goal on 1.41 ixG (-0.41)Arseny Gritsyuk: 0 goals on 1.09 ixG (-1.09)
The takeaways here are that PP2 has run their shots far, far more through Timo Meier than Arseny Gritsyuk (possibly a problem), while Jesper Bratt has largely been a passenger in his 108:07 of power play time over the last few months. The only players truly carrying their weight on the power play have been Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes. Perhaps if Jesper Bratt could convince teams that he might ever shoot the puck (he has just three primary assists in the above timeframe, anyway), or if Timo Meier and Arseny Gritsyuk switched up who was taking the shots for PP2 every now and then, they might be scoring better. But it’s a one-dimensional power play, and if one of Hischier, Hughes, or Hamilton are not scoring, nobody really is.
Perhaps more shockingly, the Devils have had horrible results at five-on-five with Timo Meier lined up next to Nico Hischier since Meier’s return. But it’s not because of poor expected numbers or shot generation. This is how that has broken down (please note that the team’s GF% without either two on the ice has been 39.74% as a point of comparison):
Hischier with Meier: 232:19 TOI | 54.49 CF% | 14.78 xGF — 10.45 xGA (58.57 xGF%) | 3 GF — 9 GA (25.00 GF%)Hischier without Meier: 264:30 TOI | 55.22 CF% | 12.12 xGF — 9.74 xGA (55.45 xGF%) | 8 GF — 10 GA (44.44 GF%)Meier without Hischier: 284:58 TOI | 55.47 CF% | 12.76 xGF — 13.22 xGA (49.12 xGF%) | 8 GF — 13 GA (38.10 GF%)
If Timo Meier was simply getting unlucky on one of the power play or at even strength, I might say that it’s a simply unlucky stretch and that it will correct itself over time. This has not been one of those stretches, though. Meier is having bad results in all situations despite apparently generating similar chances to before his leave of absence. Whether that’s not being focused enough when he’s shooting or having mental lapses in the defensive zone, or both, it just seems that something has consistently been off since December. Timo Meier is still acting as a prime shot generator on his lines. From Evolving-Hockey:
Evolving-Hockey
In terms of shot attempt impact, only Arseny Gritsyuk (who has literally been the best in the league at tilting the ice) and Jesper Bratt have had better offensive attempts impacts at five-on-five than Timo Meier among Devils forwards. So where have things really gone wrong? We can learn a bit of that from Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones project. If you feel like Timo Meier has been regularly botching his defensive plays this season, well…you’re right. Let’s compare his 2024-25 and 2025-26 tracking cards with the slider below. On the left will be his 2024-25 season and on the right will be the current one.
Credit: All Three Zones Project
Last season, Timo Meier was a great transition player, and this is where recent criticism of him as a non-transition, non-defensive player falls apart. He helped get the puck out of the defensive zone and into the offensive zone far above average. He did not fail in defensive transition very often. This season, however, has been a horror show. You might notice the big red bars in “botched retrievals,” “successful retrieval%,” “successful exit%,” and “failed exit%,” all of which were average or slightly positive last season. What happens when a player on a line consistently fails to get the puck when possible in the defensive zone, only to make bad plays trying to get out of it? That is when you see those long minute or minute-and-a-half stretches in the defensive zone, which are terrible for the flow of the players on the ice throughout the game and often result in goals against.
I do feel like Sheldon Keefe’s extremely conservative brand of hockey, which the Devils played for the most part (especially after Jack Hughes got hurt) until after the Olympic break, is a horrible fit for Timo Meier. Meier is a guy who loves a north-south rush game with a heavy forecheck, and the Devils have been the opposite of that for most of this season. Keefe’s stubbornness in trying to turn players into guys they simply are not may have also had a negative effect on Meier.
But I was hoping that, after Meier’s excellent Olympic performance, in which he was scoring and running over guys like Connor McDavid on the boards, he might come back a renewed beast for the New Jersey Devils. That has not happened. Maybe it was the location. Meier was just a few hours from home when he was playing in Milan. Playing for his country, closer to his family may have really given him a boost when he needed it. Maybe it was playing right wing, which is a position he has largely been held off of since being traded from San Jose to New Jersey.
And that’s just about where I am with Timo Meier. He has been a completely different player from the first few months to the last few, almost separated exactly by his leave of absence. You can see the differences in his game, especially on defense this season, but I am unconvinced that this is a sign of who he will be for years to come. That has not stopped him from being a drag on lines, perhaps leading to some exaggerated criticism of players like Nico Hischier (who shares the ice with him a lot), and it has really hurt the Devils in the standings this year. There’s no getting around that.
The flip side of it is that something happened within Timo’s personal life this year. He left to deal with it and came back struggling. It’s a genuinely understandable predicament. I am sure that people would deny it: players would say they just need to be better, but the players are human. They will hide injuries and they will hide struggles because they are hockey players. He’s a good guy, a good player with a smart mind for the game (I always love listening to him post-game), and I simply do not think that this season will determine who he is for years to come.
What do you think is up with Timo Meier on the ice this year? Why do you think the team’s results have been so poor with him on the ice? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.