The New Jersey Devils enter the summer looking to parlay one of their young defensemen into some scoring help, though I'm not convinced they're shopping the right guy.
While the team seems set on sending Eric Gelinas packing, I'd be trying to move Jon Merrill, whose reputation and perceived value is likely a lot higher than his actual value.
After a respectable rookie campaign, Merrill appears to have taken a step back this season.
He's not a big point producer - I doubt he every will be - and quite frankly he's not all that great defensively, either, as he's been on the wrong end of a few highlight real goals this year, and his underlying numbers have been terrible.
Back to the point, though. The Devils were a bad possession team this year, but they were even worse with Merrill on the ice.
As you can see, Merrill came out below the team average in 5 vs 5 shot attempts, 5 vs 5 scoring chances, and was a disaster when it came to goals. The Devils scored a little more than 50% of the goals at even-strength when Merrill was not on the ice, while they scored only 41% with Merrill out there. That's...not good.
Not only did Merrill fail to bring any offense to the table - he was 25th on the team in 5 vs 5 points/60 - but he was a negative in every category relative to the team, and he served as an anchor to almost every defenseman he played more than 90 minutes with.
Note: chart organized in order of most time spent with each player (left being most, right being least). Marek Zidlicky was much better without Merrill than with him. Damon Severson was better with Merrill than without, though Merrill relied more on Severson than vice versa. Gelinas posted terrible numbers with Merrill, but was over 50% without him, while Adam Larsson also posted better numbers away from Merrill.
There's a trend here and, though Merrill is only 23 and will hopefully get better, it doesn't leave much reason to be optimistic about his future.
Nothing is done yet, obviously, but it seems the Devils have zeroed in on trading the wrong guy.
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