On Dawson Mercer's Misuse
Mercer is having yet another down year production-wise after a phenomenal 2022-23 season. Is it his fault, though, or the way he's deployed?
I recently wrote about how the New Jersey Devils’ highest-paid forward Timo Meier has received a ton of flack from the fanbase, and how that is an unfair assessment of the player and his impact on the game.
Well, I have one more name to add to the list: Dawson Mercer.
I get it, conceptually. Since he entered the league — and hasn’t missed a game — he has garnered more and more time on ice per game, this season averaging 17:34. One would expect a player getting this much ice time to contribute more offense than the 18-goal, 35-point pace he’s currently chugging along at. This feeling is only exacerbated by the fact that just two seasons ago, Mercer put together a more than respectable 27 goals and 56 points. Last season was a measurable step back in production and on-ice impact, though he still managed 20 goals.
Naturally, the reaction within the fanbase is, well, ugly. Many Twitter GMs want to use him as a centerpiece in a trade, and while I don’t necessarily disagree with this in concept, it’s for all the wrong reasons — they want to be rid of him for his poor play.
I’m here to plant my flag on the hill that says that Mercer’s production struggles are more a product of misplacement in the lineup than actual subpar play.
The Role of a Passenger Player
The point I really want to drive home with this piece is that Mercer is, has been, and always will be what is a passenger player.
The role of a passenger player is relatively simple, in concept: let others do the playdriving (bringing the puck into the offensive zone in transition, pushing possessions, etc.) and find open space. High-end passenger players are sneaky and smart, being able to inch into open space in high-danger areas, and when paired with high-end playdrivers, are able to garner a ton of looks in these spots of the ice.
While playdrivers are the heart and soul of a competent NHL lineup, there are plenty of examples of high-end passenger players who have contributed a plethora of goals and points to their teams. Patrik Laine is the poster child for this archetype — his on-ice underlying statistics have been in the dumpster for much of his career, but when playing alongside someone who can drive play and get him the puck (like Mark Scheifele), he is a constant threat for goal-scoring, as evidenced by his three straight 30+ goal campaigns to start his career.
Other examples of competent passenger players? Mika Zibanejad, Gabriel Vilardi, Drake Batherson, Adrian Kempe, and Dylan Guenther — and those are just off the top of my head. These players all have two things in common: on their own, they 1) are generally unable to drive the offense and 2) are excellent at shooting the puck.
The reason for rule #1 can vary from player to player. It can be because the players in question aren’t speedy enough to make it through defenders effectively in transition, or that their hands limit them in this facet. It could also be because they don’t have the hockey sense to make an effective play over the blue line with the puck on their stick. In some cases, the players are just smart enough to realize that the puck is better off in someone else’s hands.
Mercer is no exception to those rules. When he’s tasked with being the primary offensive presence on his line, he struggles. He largely cannot bring the puck from zone to zone and as a result, looks lost on the ice. He isn’t a particularly fast player, and though his hands are good in-tight, they are less impressive when he’s operating at full speed. At the same time, his shot is extremely dangerous. He has a deceptive release, is able to change the angle of his shot to fool goaltenders, is able to lift the puck to the crossbar in extremely tight space, and generally has excellent accuracy.
Watching him play, he has a lightning-quick trigger and is able to react to plays even if he doesn’t necessarily have the offensive instinct to read the plays before they develop.
On top of that, Mercer is a defensively responsible player. He has an active stick and is effective at breaking passes up while settled in the defensive zone. He doesn’t shy away from getting into board battles with an attacking player and oftentimes has the work ethic to come out with the puck. That last point also trickles into his offensive playstyle, where he is an avid forechecker who, once he gets possession of the puck, will dole it off to his teammate and look for open space.
This all should, in theory, make him an ideal passenger player.
Mercer’s Usage in the Devils’ Lineup
Unfortunately, under Sheldon Keefe, the Devils have lined up with Mercer getting the responsibility of being the theoretical playdriver on his line for a good portion of the season, and it has caused him to look worse than he actually is when he is put into the correct role alongside legitimate drivers.
In total, Mercer has played about 774:49 this season. He’s spent 30.3% of that time — or about 235 minutes — on a line with some combination of Erik Haula, Paul Cotter, Tomas Tatar, Justin Dowling, Ondrej Palat, Nolan Foote, and Curtis Lazar. Not exactly the company that he wants to spend time with if his role as a passenger player wants to be best taken advantage of, right? Not a single one of those guys is a legitimate playdriver.
In fact, and this is not in any way a slight to Nico Hischier, but Mercer needs to play alongside one of Jack Hughes or Timo Meier if they want to exploit Mercer’s strengths as much as they can. Hischier, while an elite player to be sure, is not on the same level of playdriving aptitude as Jack or Meier.
Mercer has played 319:31 this season next to Hischier.
All in all, Mercer has spent 69.7% of the season alongside players who don’t complement his playstyle as a passenger player, logging more than 554 minutes in situations where he isn’t going to be at the top of his game.
This doesn’t mean that he’s been bad in these situations — he has a positive expected goal share (xGF%) with just about all combinations that you can come up with with the players listed above. That has more to do with his defensive responsibility and the defensive-oriented mindsets of the players around him than actually producing anything worth noting offensively, though.
Let’s use his season-long stats and compare it with his stats in certain line combinations as a testament to this accusation.
On the year, Mercer’s 5v5 expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) is 2.63, meaning that the Devils are expected to generate 2.63 goals per hour with Mercer on the ice with any combination of players. In the 48:01 he’s spent with Dowling and Cotter as his linemates, he’s generated just 1.90 xGF/60. In the 136:07 he’s spent with Cotter and Haula as his linemates, it’s a modest 2.48 xGF/60. In 23:43 with Haula and Tatar, it’s all the way down at 1.84 xGF/60.
In those three situations, those lines have generated a grand total of six goals in 207:51 — less than two goals per 60 minutes.
His results with Hischier have also been modest from an on-ice perspective. The duo has combined for an xGF/60 of 2.49 and an xGF% of 50.01%. The Devils managed just 2.25 goals per 60 minutes with them on the ice together.
So, who is Mercer best suited to play with?
How to Maximize Mercer’s Effectiveness
Bluntly put, if the Devils want Mercer to succeed, he has to be with Jack and/or Meier and away from Hischier.
Mercer has spent 120:10 on a line with Meier and without Jack or Hischier, and the Devils are generating 3.61 xGF/60 in that time and 3.00 actual goals per 60 minutes. It makes sense that the two complement each other extremely well — Meier is one of the league’s very best playdrivers this season and is an expert at creating space through physicality and strength, drawing defenders into him while Mercer can slide into open space for either a high-danger pass or rebound opportunity.
With Jack (and without Meier and Hischier), the two are generating 3.13 xGF/60 in the 40:55 they’ve played together. Here, the actual results are pretty rough — they scored just once in that time. I do think the results would come, though, as they usually do with strong underlying statistics such as that. I can’t imagine a scenario in which Jack Hughes is on the ice and the Devils are largely unable to score over a large sample size.
Mercer has played just 19:28 with both Jack and Meier, and whoo boy, are the results juicy. As per NaturalStatTrick, they generated 4.56 xGF/60 in that span and scored four times. It’s baffling to me that Sheldon Keefe hasn’t revisited that line combination considering the dominance they showed on the ice. According to Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz, they’re generating 84% (!!) more offense than league average when they’re on the ice together:
There seems to be this perception among at least the fanbase that Meier and Jack aren’t suited to play together, and while I was on board with that last season, after further thinking on it I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a thought process based on last season — one in which Meier was scarcely healthy. The concept behind it was that both players need to be the guy on their line, dominating puck possession time, but as evidenced by their successes with Mercer, it seems to me like they just need a competent passenger player who lets them both take care of the puck possession while getting into open space.
So, let’s say Keefe decides to put them back together after the break. The lines would look something like this:
Timo Meier - Jack Hughes - Dawson Mercer
Jesper Bratt - Nico Hischier - Stefan Noesen
Paul Cotter - Erik Haula - Ondrej Palat
Tomas Tatar - Curtis Lazar - Nathan Bastian
I think there’s a legitimate argument that this lineup would generate a lot more offense than the pre-break Devils who were struggling to put much of anything on the board.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that if Mercer’s production was higher than the 35-point pace he’s on right now, no one would be couch-GMing trades to get him out of New Jersey. If he were paired with the right players, the production would be there — perhaps even higher than what it was in his dominant sophomore campaign. The underlying metrics don’t lie, and neither do the on-ice results. Mercer and the Devils as a whole would mutually benefit from deploying him with better playdrivers than they have all season.