Good evening Devils fans. The Devils are beginning their final month before the preseason with a roster that is pretty much locked in. As of now, their goalie tandem will be Vitek Vanacek and Akira Schmid. I’m honestly ok with this if it means there will be a near 50/50 split with Schmid getting at least 35-40 games this season. Particularly, I would like to see how Schmid does against some top competition as we hope that he grows into a starter full time. The Devils may have some wiggle room here and there but here are the lines I would run for offense:

Bratt - J. Hughes - Toffoli
Meier - Hischier - Mercer
Foote - Haula - Palat
Nosek - Mcleod - Bastian

Extra Forwards: Holtz, Lazar, Tierney

Most likely, Chris Tierney gets sent down to Utica and Curtis Lazar / Alexander Holtz play rotation roles. I can also see Holtz pushing hard during training camp to compete for Foote’s spot, pushing him down to a possible 4th line if anything happens with the Team Canada investigation and Nosek ends up the 4th line center. Defensively, here’s how things could shake out line wise:

Sieganthaler - Hamilton
L. Hughes - Marino
Bahl - Miller

Extra Defenseman: Smith, Nemec

Brendan Smith has shown what he is capable of at this point in his career. I could definitely see him being sent down or scratched most of a season as a rotational player for injury fill-ins for the bottom lines. This leaves Simon Nemec as a question mark for how he fits into the system. Let's take a look at his previous season and some scenarios we could see him playing a role this year for the Red and Black.

Following his 2nd overall drafting at the 2022 NHL Draft, Nemec made a smooth transition from his homeland of Slovakia to the AHL. He went 12G-22A-34P in 65 GP with +13 rating. Now, to be fair, I don’t watch a ton of Slovakian professional hockey. However, one would have to think that a player who can go from 1 goal in 39 Euro league games to 12 in the more competitive and physical AHL has to be cause for hope in his development and justification for us picking him over other players. The next defenseman to be taken after Nemec was David Jiricek for Columbus, who played limited time and had similar output to Nemec for Columbus’ AHL affiliate, the Cleveland Monsters.

Now, if you take a look at his first AHL season and play with the numbers a bit, we can try to predict how he would be as a full time NHLer. Take this of course with a massive grain of salt; these numbers don’t account for health, mental readiness, or transitional issues Nemec may experience going from the AHL to the NHL. If you stretch out the AHL season to 82 games and apply the same percentage increase to his stats, Simon Nemec would have gone 15G-27A-42P with a +17 rating. Conservatively, if we cut those numbers in half, his NHL production could end up being this year around 8G-14A-22P with a +9 in a full 82 game season. Again, I acknowledge the limits of these projections; however they do open up some interesting dialogue regarding where he would fit.

If Simon Nemec can put numbers similar to that projection, that would have put him around the same points as Ryan Graves and a similar +/- to the BMW Line. What does that mean for the Devils? We have a comfortable 7-man offense to play around with this season. This adds incentives to bottom-4 defenders to push constantly for results. This also means an injury hopefully won’t be as disastrous, knowing we Nemec chomping at the bit to climb out of the minors and establish himself.

Now, if we look to the future, let’s say Nemec can play regularly over the next two seasons and can handle the big league, we also can have a few cards to play. First, if Colin Miller doesn’t work out, we can swing Simon Nemec into his spot and avoid resigning the veteran at the end of this season. If proves he can handle top-4 defensive minutes, this also makes a player like John Marino tradeable for decent assets. This all hinges on Nemec’s ability to transition his game from the AHL to the NHL. That’s no easy feat. Look at many of our prospects of the last 10 years who were highly touted to find limited time at the top level in the organization and ended up being traded off or playing their career in Europe.

The first step for Nemec this summer is to elevate his fitness, speed, conditioning, and skills so that when training camp rolls around with the full team for the offseason, he can shine that much brighter.

What are your thoughts? What lines would you like to see the Devils run with? Can Simon Nemec carve a spot for himself? If you caught any of his time in Utica last season, how did he look?

Leave your thoughts and comments below. Raise Hell,

-Josh Biringer

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