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A few notes on the last off-day before the New Jersey Devils return to action:
1) One thing I'd like to see more of down the stretch: Damon Severson quarterbacking the power play. Yes, there is already a lot on his plate. Yes, he can make the occasional boneheaded turnover. That said, he is clearly the team's best option to run the power play.
The Devils generate more shots, shot attempts and goals per minute with Severson manning the point than John Moore, Andy Greene and Yohann Auvitu (when he was up). Severson also leads the group in points per 60.
If you expand the sample size to include the last couple seasons, Severson still ranks ahead of Moore, Greene, and co. in each major category. He should be getting consistent time on the man advantage.
2) If it feels like Kyle Palmieri misses the net a ton, he does. So much so that less than 50% of his shot attempts have hit the target, which ranks last among eight forwards on the team with at least 100 shot attempts this season.
To me, this definitely checks out. If I were to blindly guess the two forwards who miss the net most often I'd have gone with Palmieri and Mike Cammalleri, who has cleared the zone with more errant one-timers than I could keep track of.
3) Through 54 games the Devils' leader in 5v5 points is Travis Zajac. If I were to tell you that prior to the season how many of you would think the Devils would be four points out with two games in hand this far into the year? Not many, I'm guessing.
4) There is a lot of hockey left on the schedule but I think it's imperative the Devils make some noise to close out this month. Seven of eight games remaining in February will be played at the Prudential Center and they play the Islanders (two points ahead) and Senators (six points ahead) twice each. If they can sweep one of those mini-series', and hold their own in the rest of the games, they should be in a good position when March rolls around. If they don't win at least half of the games, I don't think they'll have a realistic shot of getting in.
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