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Emergence Of Young Defensemen Making Things Tough On Devils

October 1, 2014, 2:24 PM ET [60 Comments]
Todd Cordell
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The Devils are going to have a lot of youth playing regular minutes on defense this year, so rather than dancing around it they've thrown their guys right into the fire during preseason.

The team has played four games to date, and all of Eric Gelinas, Adam Larsson as well as Damon Severson played three games, while Seth Helgeson, who's a bit of a long shot, has played in just two.

Obviously it's just preseason so we don't want to get too carried away with expectations based on what we see in a very small sample size, but there's reason to be optimistic.

I went through the game logs and added the even strength shot attempt totals, and the results to date have been pretty encouraging.



As you can see, Gelinas and Severson have played far above the competition. The Devils have generated the large majority of the shot attempts when they've been on the ice, which often leads to outscoring your opposition.

Helgeson has also fared well, though his sample size is smaller, and has been against softer competition.

On first glance Larsson's numbers might be a little worrisome, but he's posted good possession numbers in two of his three games, with the only exception being the collective team stinker against the Flyers.

The Devils still have time to sort their defense out, but Severson and Helgeson are making these decisions much more difficult than the Devils probably expected.

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