I wrote last off-season that we needed to add more scoring, and well, I’m back to take a look at where we stand and if Sunny and co. have done enough to address it since…. they did not last season. With the addition of Evangelista, I am assuming any other move is some fringe roster management (except for one large possibility). Scoring goals has been our biggest problem BY FAR and I truly hope this blog doesn’t become some sort of annual tradition for me.
I know people want to pin things on Markstrom, but when you are shut out 7 times and score 1 goal 16 times it is very hard to lay blame on the goaltending as the main problem. That’s almost 30% of the season for those keeping track at home, and I’m not even counting the handful of worthless goals scored late down 2 or 3. For context around the league, teams average about 2.5 shutouts against per season and 9-10 1 goal performances a season. That being said, I won’t shed a tear for him and wish him well in Florida. Moving on from him opened up a window to vastly improve the skater group which I am a firm believer is more important.
As a team, the Devils were 31st in 5v5 scoring in 2025-26, and 5th to last over the past two seasons combined. The only thing that really salvaged a decent record was the Power Play. This team was actually producing at a decent clip before Jack’s injury and after the Olympics: they were sitting at 8th in scoring until Nov. 12th and were 13th after Olympic break. Also, as well all know, that stretch in the middle was atrocious; we were dead last with only 90 goals over the course of 41 games. Seems a bit better with Jack, right? Well, kind of, we were 18th in 5v5 scoring in that early stretch and 25th after the Olympic break so we were still largely being carried by the power play. This isn’t to say power play goals count less, a goal is a goal, but we really need to find some more even strength scoring to help insulate this offense and not be so reliant on Jack.
I’m a big believer in context and understanding how good teams operate and play and how the Devils can take lessons from those teams. There are a few different ways to generate offense, and regardless of whether teams are top heavy (Tampa Bay) or distributed (Carolina) good process tends to lead to scoring success which leads to playoff success. Sunny has dropped the term “process” a few times in different contexts, and based on who he brought in via trades it seems he values good on-ice process. The teams with the best process tend to be the most successful: over the past three years, 3 of 4 top teams in xGF% have made the conference finals:
25-26: Colorado, Carolina, Vegas
24-25: Florida, Carolina, Edmonton
23-24: Edmonton, Dallas, Florida
The 4th teams that made it were riding a hot goalie (Montreal) or had serious shooting/power play fortune (Dallas and NYR). This is what Sunny talks about with using analytics as a predictive mechanism, I think we’d all take a 75% probability over hopes and dreams any day.
Every single player the Devils brought in and kept are good process players and win their minutes based on chance generation and score differential, while all of the players we said goodbye to were mediocre to bad process players who lost their minutes – some pretty handily. XGF% also has defensive inputs in it, and the Devils weren’t actually all that bad from a xGA perspective, sitting 12th in the league at 3.07 per 60 in all situations last season (hockeystats.com). However they do have a lot of room to improve at 5v5, finishing 18th at xGA/60 giving up 2.62. We’ve written ad nauseum about the Defensive group, but hockey is a 5 man game and one of the more under-discussed elements of Sunny’s off season is that we will have one of the better defensive forward collections in the league (good read by JP Gambatese, idea from me). Erod, Evangelista, and Boqvist are all 65% or above in defensive WAR, adding to guys like Mercer, Glass, and Gritsyuk who are all 70%+ defensive WAR. Even all of the “liabilities” like Jack, Bratt, and Mantha have had seasons clearing 50% defensive WAR and not a single player is a black hole defensively. With this group I expect this team to easily land in the top 10 defensively at both 5v5 and all situations.
There was only one team in the top half of the standings last year that wasn’t also in the top half in scoring – the Flyers. So scoring goals is pretty pretty pretty important (I know, incredible analysis). Here is a look at the top 15 teams in scoring last season:
Source: NHL.com
268 goals (3.27 G/GP) last season puts them in the top 10, which is right in line with the 265 (3.23 G/GP) in 2024-25. Since we are moving to an 84 game schedule that should tick up a bit to 273-275 goals based on a 3.25 G/GP rate to even squeeze into the top 10. If you want to be greedy, to get into the top 5 they’d need to add 60 goals and score at a 3.4 G/GP clip – about half a goal a game better than they were last season.
So, How Do They Make That Happen?
The first part and lowest hanging fruit is converting back at 2024-25 levels on the power play (28%). The Devils scored 43 goals at 5v4, 2 at 4v3 and 0 at 5v3 in 2025-26, converting at a 22% rate, 13th best in the league. This starts with drawing more penalties, as they were third worst in the league getting only 2.5 opportunities per game, down from 2.7 in 24-25 (and 2.7 in their peak year 22-23). Rodrigues and Evangelista are both very good at drawing penalties while Mantha is net neutral.
It fell off without Jack, who flat out needs to stay healthy – if he doesn’t, we need to have a conversation. They were 22% early in the year, 17% while he was hurt and 24% after the Olympics. Quite frankly, admitting we are power play merchants is the first step in recovery, and we need to be a top 3-5 unit next season.
They have it in them, and you’ll never guess what the problem has been. Trick question, It was finishing. Below in green are the GF/60 numbers and in red are the xGF/60 numbers for the top 10 power plays. The Devils were the 3rd most dangerous power play in the league, generating 8.8 xGF per hour while scoring almost a goal less per hour, the second worst rate among the top 10.
Source: Hockeystats.com
So, All that being said, I would like to see them get back to drawing more penalties and converting above 25% again. That should add 10-15 goals next season over an 84 game schedule. Be on the lookout for our preview series next week, I am taking on special teams and will have some thoughts about personnel here.
Now, Let’s Talk About the Bad Place
5v5. I still cannot believe I sat there, game in and game out last season and watched every minute of every game. I grew up on some terrible Devils teams in the 80s and sat through our most recent decade of darkness, and I contend we iced some of the worst hockey I’ve ever seen this team play last season. As I mentioned up top, they were 31st in 5v5 scoring this past season, with 136 goals at even strength, only 5 ahead of Vancouver who scored 131 and finished with 58 points. This needs to drastically improve, the only teams in the top 15 in points that were outside the top 15 in 5v5 scoring were Minnesota, Dallas, and Philly (Dallas and Minnesota were 1 and 3 goals less, respectively). Below shows the top 10 teams, which is where the Devils should strive to get into next season:
Sadz. Source: NHL.com
I see some light at the end of the tunnel with a fully revamped forward group that has far more depth, better complimentary pieces in the top 6, and will be better at play driving top to bottom. Our biggest goal scoring loss was actually Nemec with 10, but keep in mind he scored 4 of his goals against Chicago and 2 against Calgary.
Source: Hockeystats.comixGF = individual expected goals for
Obviously, this isn’t an exact science and they all won’t repeat exactly what they did last season, but by trimming some fat at the bottom of the lineup and supplementing the top 6 with real contributors, we are adding much better process up and down the lineup. I’d also expect Mantha to get 3-4 minutes more a night at 5v5 and with Jack and Bratt, he should be able to add 25+ goals at even strength in his sleep – so basically one guy can replace what we lost in total from 8 guys. Between the rest of the additions we should be adding anywhere from 22-28 goals.
That Leaves the Returning Guys
So between an uptick in PP scoring and the new additions that puts us conservatively above 260 goals (226+10+25). That leaves an additional 15 goals to get into the top 10 and another 20 goals to be one of the best scoring teams in the league. And this needs to come from the returning group. There is a bit of a mixed bag with the returning players in terms of what needs to happen. There is a group that needs to be healthier, a few guys that need to finish their chances better, and another few guys that should seem some normalization (both good and bad).
I am operating under the assumption that the lineup will look something like this:
Timo – Nico – Evangelista
Grits – Glass/Erod – Mercer
Boqvist/Lombardi – Erod/Glass – Brown
First, I think Cody Glass will be hard pressed to put up 18 5v5 goals again. I touched on this in some of the under the radar questions I had for this upcoming season, but I expect him to settle back into a 10-13 goal range, especially if the Devils use him to take some of the defensive burden off of Nico. Also on that 3rd line, I have Dawson Mercer who only scored 8 5v5 goals last season, which I expect to get back to the 10-15 range from years past. These two should offset each other. I also see Grits on that line, who I expect a jump in production with a full season under his belt, new deal, and more confidence. 11 of his 13 goals last season were at even strength, which I would be surprised if he doesn’t get upwards of 20 this season, even with a more defensive deployment on this line. So, conservatively this new look 3rd line should net us 8-10 additional goals.
Also in the bottom 6 I see some version of Brown/Boqvist/Lombardi as the wings on the 4th line. I included Boqvist above, but I think the addition of Lombardi should offset some of the production loss from Brown as he slides down the lineup. Brown scored 4 of his 9 even strength goals post Olympics playing up with Jack and Bratt, so with less minutes and a different role I’d expect about 5 5v5 goals from him. I have no idea what to expect from Lombardi, or what his role is going to be (or if it’s Noesen/Bjugstad) but the other 4th line wing I will pencil in for 5 goals, so these changes offset each other.
If you’re keeping score at home, I see the returning guys in the bottom six netting us an additional 10 goals, so the Defensive group and top 6 need to get us the rest of the way. Defensemen goals are a little hard to project, but we flat out need more scoring from this group. However, we may be hard pressed to get any more – accounting for the loss of Nemec, the Devils were tied for last in goals from defenseman at even strength with 16. I really don’t expect much of anything from the likes of Dillon, Kovacevic, and Siegenthaler who had a combined 3 goals, all of which came from Dillon, and two of those were in consecutive games in October. Dougie and Luke will have to carry the water here, Dougie especially, and Pesce needs to play a full season. With better forwards that can actually cycle the puck and an offensive system with the D joining the rush more (like post-Olympics) I do expect a slight uptick to about 20-22 goals from this group, so about 5-8 additional goals.
That leaves an additional 10-15 goals needed from our “big 4.” East stuff first – the only consistent guy in this group is Nico, who you can basically set you clock to 30-ish goals in total and 20 at even strength. From there the msot obvious and glaring need is Jack Hughes to make it 75+ games because if (when!) he does this is obviously a different team. He scored at a 40 goal pace post Olympics, and a 30 goal pace at EVEN STRENGTH last season, so if he can go from 22 to 30 5v5 goals next season that would leave only 8-10 additional goals needed out of Bratt and Timo at even strength. With the additional of Evangelista to Nico/Timo I expect this to really benefit Timo. Adding one of the most underrated playmakers to his line, I am really wish-casting he plays at his post-Olympic 33 goal pace. And no, wing side doesn’t matter. As far as Bratt, I expect a slight uptick with healthy Jack and his goal scoring my ebb and flow based on teams keying on Mantha.
Conclusion and Your Thoughts
I think Sunny’s moves have absolutely made this a better team, and even with a little hopes and dreams in looking at the numbers we should be a far better scoring team:
This would put us right at the top 10 with 265 goals on the conservative end and 285 if everything goes extremely well. I know I laid out a path by group, but it could come from anywhere, as long as we are chugging along around 3.25-3.5 G/GP we should get back to the team we are supposed to be. I don’t want to write this blog again next summer.
What do you think gang, do we have enough juice this year? HOCKEY IS BACK!!!!