In what was a season of high and lows for the Devils, the team managed to take a step forward when many pundits predicted they would be in a dogfight in the race for Auston Matthews. One big reason for the Devils step forward was the emergence of Kyle Palmieri. He set career highs across the board tallying 30 goals and 27 assists for 57 points, which lead the team at season’s end. In doing so, he became the Devils first 30-goal scorer (along with Adam Henrique) since Ilya Kovalchuk, Zach Parise, and David Clarkson all hit the mark in 2011-12.

One of Palmieri’s biggest strengths this season was his play on the power-play. He led the team with 11 goals and 12 assists with the man advantage. In just under 200 minutes on the power-play, Palmieri was producing at a rate of 2.74 goals/60, which was the 20th best rate in the league. His 5.78 points/60 with the man advantage was also 21st in the league.

It’s clear that Palmieri’s contributions on the power-play were a big reason for his success and why the Devils power-play finished as the 9th best in the league this season. Even though, he had great success at 5v4, how did Palmieri fare at even strength?

The Devils struggles at even-strength were no secret. The team finished with a league-worst 108 goals at 5v5. That’s twelve less than Toronto, the team with the second worst margin. Palmieri accounted for 19 of the Devils 108 even-strength goals this season. Take him out of the equation and the Devils could’ve been looking at historically bad goal rates at even-strength.

One area where Palmieri struggled was puck possession. Palmieri’s 45.4% possession rate was ninth worst on the team and the worst percentage of his career in a season where he played more than forty games. Of note in Palmieri’s poor possession rate is a sudden drop from about the middle of January until the end of the season, as this chart from Corsica Hockey shows:

Shortly after Reid Boucher was called up in January, Palmieri found himself on a line with Boucher and Zajac. The line played 235 minutes together this season, 214 of which came after Boucher’s call up in January. The line got consistently hammered at even-strength, which is probably a good reason for Palmieri’s substantial drop in possession, so it’s not a big concern for someone who’s had decent possession numbers over his career.

If there are any concerns going forward about Palmieri, it’s if he can repeat the season he just had. He’s never been a 30-goal scorer before, but unlike in Anaheim, he logged regular top-6 minutes in New Jersey. He also wasn’t riding a crazy shooting-percentage tear. On the year, Palmieri had a 13.5% shooting percentage and for his career is a 11.8% shooter.

There’s clearly a lot more positive than negative here and Shero & Co. will no doubt look to lock this Jersey native up long term. He’s on the right side of 30, exactly what this Devils team needs and he has a tremendous amount of upside worth “gambling” on. With Palmieri set to become a restricted free agent this summer, he’ll be surely due a hefty pay raise this summer from $1.6 million salary he currently has. So what could his next contract look like?

Find out tomorrow in PART 2 of our feature on Kyle Palmieri.