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The line of Blake Coleman, Travis Zajac, and Stefan Noesen received a lot of praise for their play down the stretch and in the playoffs. Deservedly so.

They were tasked with slowing down the opposition's top players and did just that while creating some offense of their own in the process.

On many nights they were the team's best line beyond the one that featured the league MVP in Taylor Hall.

Having recently re-signed Coleman and Noesen, John Hynes has the ability to run it back with that trio should he wish to do so. The numbers suggest that'd be a good idea.

Last season 125 line combinations played at least 150 minutes together at 5v5, per Corsica. Among them, the Coleman - Zajac - Noesen unit ranked 5th in Expected Goals Against/60 and their defensive numbers were excellent across the board.

Of the 10 leaders in xGA/60, none did a better job of actually preventing goals than New Jersey's shutdown line.

Only Jason Zucker - Mikkoi Koivu - Mikael Granlund, one of the league's best two-way lines, and Arturri Lehkonen - Tomas Plekanec - Brendan Gallagher controlled a larger share of the expected goals.

We're not dealing with a massive sample size – 160 minutes in the case of New Jersey's top defensive trio – but there's enough here to suggest Hynes just might have found something.

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