Barring anything unforeseen happening, Adam Larsson will be with the big club in New Jersey come October.
After a pretty impressive rookie campaign, Larsson has spent the last two seasons going up and down between New Jersey and Albany.
While he has shown flashes, he's been somewhat inconsistent when given an opportunity to play, and has been the victim of a numbers game with the Devils having so many defensemen signed to one-way contracts.
Larsson is no longer waiver exempt, meaning when he signs his next contract - he's a restricted free agent on July 1 - with the Devils he won't be able to be assigned to Albany without being placed on waivers.
Obviously Larsson would never clear waivers, so unless he's traded or signs overseas he will be on the pro roster this fall.
That leads me to my next question: who should Larsson be paired with to get the most out of the former top-5 pick?
I took to the shot attempt numbers over his first three seasons to help decide the best fit, and have graphed how he's fared with his four most frequent defense partners.
The first thing that stands out to me is just how effective Larsson and Eric Gelinas were together. Though the sample size wasn't overly large (just over 170 minutes) the two seemed to feed off each other, and drove play at a ridiculously high rate.
When those two played on the same pairing, 60% of all shot attempts taken were directed at the opposing net, while only 40% were sent in the direction of the Devils' goal. Those are elite numbers and though they'd likely drop a bit with a large sample size, they're hard to ignore. Gelinas seemed to struggle at even strength after the pairing was broken up, so perhaps reuniting the two this fall could be beneficial for all parties.
I was surprised to see how impressive Anton Volchenkov's numbers with Larsson were. The sample size was over double of the Larsson-Gelinas pairing, and the numbers were almost identical. That said, Volchenkov seemed to take a step back this season and will likely be bought out, so if they're paired together this fall it'll likely be for another organization.
Both Andy Greene and Larsson seemed to fare better without each other than with, so I think it makes sense to keep those two split up. If Mark Fayne is re-signed, which I think he should be, then I expect Greene to be with him again.
As for Salvador, his numbers are poor whether he's with Larsson or without him. Given he only has one year left on his contract, is the captain and the Devils only have one compliance buyout remaining (they used the other on Johan Hedberg last summer) I think it's unlikely he goes anywhere this summer. I don't really care who he's paired with next season, as long as he's seeing 3rd pairing minutes, but that's a story for another day.
All in all Larsson seemed to be at his best playing with Gelinas or Volchenkov. Considering the latter's days with the Devils appear to be numbered, I think Pete DeBoer would be smart to put the two kids together come October.
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