With July winding down, the New Jersey Devils look more or less set for the upcoming season. Still, some Devils fans who seem to have forgotten that Tom Fitzgerald has been replaced by Sunny Mehta continue to wait for a Dougie Hamilton trade, and some are still expecting that Dawson Mercer is going to be packaged for a top six forward. Recently, Sunny Mehta reiterated on James Nichols’ show that Dougie Hamilton is here to stay and contribute in an offensive role, but he has not (to my knowledge)
commented on Dawson Mercer.
The funny thing about this backhanded criticism of Dawson Mercer — that he needs to be packaged with other assets to get a top six forward on the roster — is that he serves as an uplifting force to the entire top six regardless of who he plays with. While the previous regime went out and paid $6 million per season to Ondrej Palat, hoping that he could somehow do a lot of dirty work for the top six and make them better players, the current front office has the player Palat was supposed to be under contract for $4 million per season.
Of course, this is not to deny that Mercer has developed some shortcomings since his first couple of seasons. I do question the direction he got as a player from the organization, which seemed to focus more on his defensive skills than encouraging the offensive creativity he showed in his first two seasons. If you’re looking for a reason why he looks more uncomfortable at center as a five-year veteran than he did as a 19-year old rookie, look no further than that: there is such a thing as being risk averse to a fault on the ice. Since centers in the modern NHL generally need to be offensive engines for their lines, this hyperfocus on defense can stunt and stifle someone in their early 20s.
Remember when he played with pace?
It’s almost like he’s supposed to be a skilled player.
On a very basic level, it’s nearly impossible for a player to have a fluke 20-goal season in the NHL. And out of Dawson Mercer’s five full NHL seasons, he has scored 17, 27, 20, 19, and 20. Even so, this is not a guy who hunts for goals at the expense of his other responsibilities. If anything, he has absorbed the “support role” a little too strongly into his being, as evidenced by his sharp decline in shots per 60 minutes after his 27-goal sophomore campaign. Per Natural Stat Trick, this is Dawson Mercer’s career progression in five-on-five shots per 60 minutes compared to individual expected goals, on-ice high-danger scoring chances (not just individual), goals per 60 minutes, and primary assists per 60 minutes:
- 2021-22: 6.93 shots/60, 0.7 ixG/60, 12.37 HDCF/60, 0.75 G/60, 0.85 A1/60
- 2022-23: 7.27 shots/60, 0.92 ixG/60, 12.45 HDCF/60, 1.1 G/60, 0.66 A1/60
- 2023-24: 5.85 shots/60, 0.8 ixG/60, 11.21 HDCF/60, 0.87 G/60, 0.32 A1/60
- 2024-25: 5.44 shots/60, 0.7 ixG/60, 10.51 HDCF/60, 0.59 G/60, 0.49 A1/60
- 2025-26: 5.46 shots/60, 0.72 ixG/60, 11.91 HDCF/60, 0.42 G/60, 0.52 A1/60
To date, the Devils have never replicated the level of offensive force they had when Dawson Mercer was 19 or 20 years old, when they scored over three goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five with him on the ice. Since then, they have barely been able to break above two goals per 60 minutes. Was this a directive from Tom Fitzgerald or people in player development that Dawson Mercer needed to play a grittier, more defensive game? Did something happen to Dawson Mercer that made him suddenly lose his offensive focus? It’s quite hard to explain why someone who generated shots at a decent clip like Mercer while managing to rack up a very decent amount of primary assists as well would suddenly start falling off in the offensive zone like that. Most importantly, you can associate a direct decline in the team’s high-danger scoring chances with when Dawson Mercer stopped being a primary offensive option in the top six.
But it’s not all bad. Per Natural Stat Trick, there is still a trend with Dawson Mercer that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts when he is grouped with offensive top six players. Here are a few such examples from the 2025-26 season:
- When Mercer played with Jack Hughes without Jesper Bratt (92:57), the Devils outscored opponents 6-0
- When Mercer played with Hischier and Meier (477:09), the Devils had a 27.08-18.55 xG (59.35 xGF%) advantage, up from a 51.50 xGF% advantage in their 271:34 without Mercer
- When Mercer played with Arseny Gritsyuk (218:33), the Devils had a 56.00 xGF%, up from Gritsyuk’s 52.88 xGF% without Mercer (672:43) and Mercer’s 51.76 xGF% without Gritsyuk (934:51)
- When discounting Mercer’s most incompatible linemates (Paul Cotter, Cody Glass, Connor Brown, Evgenii Dadonov), the Devils had a 56.50 xGF% and were only outscored 33-34 in 912:40
- For reference, the top full-season xGF% came from Jesper Bratt at 55.55, while the team was outscored 46-59 in his 1139:12 at 5v5
I think the arrival of Anthony Mantha and Evan Rodrigues gives the Devils a really good chance to rediscover the kind of player that Dawson Mercer was drafted to be: a playmaking center or wing. In Mantha and Rodrigues, the Devils are gaining top or middle-six quality offensive forwards that they really have not had since the 2022-23 season, when Erik Haula and Tomas Tatar allowed for a wider proliferation of scoring around the lineup. Those were the days that Ondrej Palat scored close to a point every other game, Nate Bastian scored at a 25+ point pace, and the Devils’ bottom six featured very solid scoring threats like Yegor Sharangovich and Miles Wood.
Mantha and Rodrigues as a combo are a step above Haula and Tatar on an offensive level, while Rodrigues can handle a lot of the defensive and support work that Mercer has been cast into over the last few years. Maybe Mercer ends up on a top line with Hischier and Meier. Maybe he ends up with Hughes and Mantha or Bratt. I would not discount the idea of him playing the third-line center role with Mantha and Rodrigues on his wings, either. This is not the usual crop of forwards that Mercer would be saddled with when cast into a center role due to injury or lack of center depth, but quality forwards that I would hope Mercer would mesh with on a similar level to those of the top six guys he has been playing with for years. As visualized by HockeyViz below, Mercer makes top six players better, but does not play well with other forwards.
I think getting out of a big defensive role would be good for Mercer as well, especially with defensive savant Cody Glass waiting around and not being used all that much in the role by Sheldon Keefe. We have all seen the long defensive shift from a line with Dawson Mercer on it where he goes to flip the puck out to center ice and fails to even clear the zone because of his fear of being dinged for an icing. It’s on these shifts where Mercer just seems so caught up with not getting out of position that he forgets how to make plays. But Dawson Mercer has been very responsible over the years in New Jersey, and I would rather give him the grace to be aggressive and have something occasionally go against him than watch him sink into further passivity. He has the skill to make more plays than he puts himself into position for.
Given what we have seen from Mercer in his flashes of skill on the ice, I question the fan logic of wanting someone like Mercer out of the building, especially since he has a long track record of quantifiable positive chemistry with the team’s core forwards and top offensive defenseman. In truth, the Devils have not had an elite balance of scoring chances for and against since that 2022-23 season, but Mercer and Hischier have consistently stayed in that upper echelon over time when on the ice together. When it works, it almost seems unstoppable, and the Devils should be trying to replicate those scoring chance advantages on other lines rather than totally rip these pieces apart.
This is a big year for Mercer as he approaches his last offseason of restricted free agency. I suspect that some people will use that to qualify and caution any increase in productivity that comes off his stick, but I have hopes that the new analytic approaches of Sunny Mehta’s front office will have an impact on the way forwards are utilized and deployed, and that starts with using Hischier, Mercer, and Meier in more offensive roles than they have been over the last couple years. If Sheldon Keefe wants a shutdown center or line, he should start looking at Cody Glass. In the meantime, Dawson Mercer needs to get back in touch with his playmaking ways, whether that’s as a winger for a more offensively deployed top six or as a third-line center with the fresh faces wearing Devils sweaters on his wings. And ultimately, if Sunny Mehta wants another forward, he should probably look at the glut of left-handed defensemen before thinking about swapping someone like Mercer out.
Your Thoughts
But what do you think of this whole debate? Are you someone who has been forecasting Dawson Mercer’s departure from New Jersey? Or are you a Mercer believer? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.
