On Timo Meier's Unfair Treatment in an Excellent Season
The power forward has had a superb year with the New Jersey Devils, but social media would have you believe he's been a plague on the team.
If there’s one thing I’ve grown tired of this season it’s watching the New Jersey Devils’ fanbase point finger after finger at players who are not responsible for their poor play at times. Dougie Hamilton. Luke Hughes. Jesper Bratt. Hell, even Jack Hughes. It may be my own fault for my Twitter algorithm, but the point stands that I’d rather have my teeth pulled than watch another second of it.
Enter Timo Meier, who has been the subject of it all season. The arguments are always the same. “He isn’t the same player he was in San Jose.” “He gets paid $8.8 million, he should play like it.” “He’s pacing for 55 points.” “No more excuses!”
Enter me, who is here to say that he is very much the same player he was in San Jose. He is playing like an $8.8+ million player. He is indeed pacing for 55 points, but these are not excuses; they’re reasons why Meier is an excellent player.
Comparing This Season to his time in San Jose
The most common complaint I’ve seen out there is that he isn’t the same player that the Devils traded for from San Jose. Last season, I’d agree — he was injured for the majority of it and couldn’t skate nearly as well as he was prior to the trade. This season, though, he has his legs and has been extraordinarily effective.
For the sake of this comparison, let’s compare this season to his last three in San Jose — two of which were the highest point-per-game outputs of his career. (76 in 77 in 2021-22, 52 in 57 in 2022-23). For this exercise, I focused on individual-oriented statistics, since those seem to be the only part of Timo’s game people care about.
Outside of the one monstrous 5v5 season point-wise in 2021-22, Meier’s 5v5 production hasn’t dipped from the player he was in San Jose.
He’s still clearing 20+ shot attempts per hour (20.62), which, this season, ranks 5th in the entire NHL behind noted volume shooters Filip Forsberg (22.22), Auston Matthews (21.48), Brady Tkachuk (21.19), and Owen Tippett (20.72). He is also still clearing 10 individual scoring chances per hour, which is 6th in the NHL, and his individual high-danger chances are still floating around 5. His 1.1 individual expected goals per hour are not only par for the course in his career, but rank 7th in the league as well.
The only part of his game that could be considered “down” is his shots on goal per 60 minutes. Sure, you’d like to see him hit the net a couple more times, but he is also tied for the team league in posts/crossbars hit this season with 10.
The overarching point here is that his play is largely the same from an on-ice perspective. He’s still shooting a ton, he’s still getting high-danger chances off like few in the league, and he’s still an extraordinarily effective player at 5v5.
To go one step further, let’s look at his microstats this season and compare them to the career season he had in 2021-22:
Largely the same exact offensive player, right, at least in terms of the little things? Still chart-breaking on several “general offense” categories (though he is down in shot assists). Still more focused on shooting than passing. Still a plus on literally every single offensive type. I’m really not sure what the masses are seeing, but this is directly contradictory to the “eye test” people who think he is a shell of his former self.
Notice how I said he’s largely the same offensive player above, ignoring the defensive side of things. That’s because he’s completely transformed his game and turned into a defensive monster. He went from being a net negative on defensive zone retrievals and exits to a positive nearly across the board in that regard. It’s apparent in his game, too — no one is complaining about his work in the Devils’ own zone.
The main detraction to me about his game this year in comparison to his time with the Sharks has been his transitional play. It’s still well above average, don’t get me wrong, but his metrics are down nearly across the board. The culprit? Playing with better players. When he was in San Jose, he was the guy — the entire Sharks offense leaned on him to do the transitional heavy lifting and, well, that simply isn’t a requirement when you play with Hughes, Bratt, and Hischier; players who are of similar or better caliber. He has the ability to defer to them when he’s playing on the same line, and that’s where his microstats take a tumble.
5v5 Production Not an Issue
On the season, Meier ranks third on the team in 5v5 points per 60 minutes, somewhat behind Hughes for second place. No one is going to match Bratt’s production rate here.
He’s more efficient at putting points on the board at 5v5 than Hischier, who has been Devils’ Twitter’s messiah all season. The only thing standing between him and being point-per-game is power play time, and I can’t fault the coaches for putting him on PP2 considering how effective PP1 has been this season.
Meier’s Playdriving Excellence
Point production aside, there is a legitimate argument that Meier has been the Devils’ most efficient playdriver this season. He leads the team in expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) pretty handily — the difference between him and second-place Hischier is the same difference between Hischier and eighth-place. With Meier on the ice, the Devils have been generating 28% more offense at 5v5 than league average.
Among the 32 forwards in the NHL who have played at least 800 minutes of 5v5 time, Meier ranks 5th in xGF/60, behind Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, and Nathan MacKinnon. He’s ahead of the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Mikko Rantanen, Jake Guentzel, William Nylander, and, of course, Jack Hughes. He finds himself in pretty good company here.
With Meier on the ice, the Devils are generating 33.44 scoring chances per 60 minutes (SCF/60), which is again 5th among that group, behind MacKinnon, McDavid, Rantanen, and Draisaitl. They’re also generating 13.7 high-danger scoring chances per hour (HDCF/60), 6th in the league.
The best part of this playdriving is that Meier is starting in the offensive zone just 44.28% of the time, which is the second-lowest percentage in that group behind Brandon Hagel. The players above him in xGF/60, SCF/60, and HDCF/60 are all starting more than 60% of their faceoffs in the offensive zone.
So, what’s the problem? Why are the points not coming? It might sound like one of the reasons that people have been digging into him, but the fact is that Meier has been incredibly unlucky. In that same group of 32 forwards, Meier’s on-ice shooting percentage (oiSH%) is the fourth-worst. All players on the ice while Meier is on are shooting a combined 8.35%, well below the league average of nearly 10%. He himself has hit 10 posts or crossbars.
Between the unluckiness, the underlying metrics, the defensive aptitude, and the fact that his 5v5 production hasn’t dipped down all that much, there is legitimacy to this actually being his best season to date. He’s every part of the $8.8 million player the Devils signed, and fans, quite frankly, need to get off his back. There are actual issues with the team (injuries, bottom-six playdriving and scoring) to point towards. Denouncing a player who has been playing extraordinarily well all season is just clueless and needlessly inaccurate.
Thank you. I'm bookmarking this one, and sending it to anyone who gives me any shit about Meier.
I've watched some of Timo's highlights from 2023 with the Sharks and he was a big time beneficiary of a 101 point season by Erik Karlsson.