Last night, the New Jersey Devils stormed into Madison Square Garden and walked out with a 6-3 victory over Our Hated Rivals. It’s the second win for the Devils this season in two tries (both by the same score as well) with one more meeting between the teams set for the end of the month. With the way this season has gone, the Rangers are a team the Devils should be beating. The Rangers are a team the Devils should be dominating the run of play with as they did.
And yet after watching last night, I’m still feeling unsatisfied.
Maybe he’s not completely to blame for all three goals, but Jacob Markstrom turned in another performance that screamed “I’m not a starting goaltender anymore!” When two goals get by you on the first three shots that the Rangers muster (across two separate periods no less) then maybe you’re not the guy that a team with playoff aspirations needs. His last five starts including last night have seen him allow three or more goals in all five games and a save percentage of .900 or lower in each of the five as well. MoneyPuck has him as the 87th best goalie in the NHL out of 93 in terms of goals saved above expected.
On the season, Markstrom is sporting a 3.10 goals against average and an .884 save percentage. Those are, quite frankly, awful numbers. They look even worse when you realize that Jake Allen has to play in front of the same team and (in only nine fewer games than Markstrom) has a 2.69 GAA and a .906 save percentage. I’m not going to pretend those are numbers you would like to see from an NHL starter either, but it goes to show how bad the Devils’ “starter” has been this season. And this will be the only part of this article where we mentioned the boneheaded move by GM Tom Fitzgerald to watch Markstrom’s play fall off a cliff at the start of the season and still give him two more seasons at $6 million instead of trying literally anything else.
It is that “literally anything else” that the Devils might need to try however. There’s no way possible to just run back a tandem that did not work this season. Free agency doesn’t seem to have a whole lot in terms of methods to fix this either, so the Devils might have to try to get creative. A trade could have been an option, but no one is going to want Markstrom, and why would you trade the better, cheaper goalie in Allen? Additionally, if Allen’s play falls off a cliff in the next year or two, his contract can be buried for a decent portion of cap relief and another team might take a chance on him anyway due to his smaller cap hit.
Perhaps training camp become more important with the Devils having some young goalie in the organization that can get an extended audition. Between the training camp itself and preseason games, the Devils might be able to figure out if one of their prospects is ready enough to at least see some NHL action. Yet that would create a problem with a need to carry three goalies. It wouldn’t be ideal, but if someone could outplay Markstrom in camp, it’s not as if the Devils have so many NHL level forwards and defenders that they need those healthy scratch spots for them. Three goalies on the regular would be unorthodox, but Tom Fitzgerald has put the Devils into a hole where they might need to do so just to have more than one goalie on the roster who can perform at an average or better level. Either that or…you know…change the goalie coach like we’ve been saying for years!
I don’t have a solution here today for how the Devils fix their goaltending, but last night once again proved that things can’t continue on this way into next season. The fact that we’re already looking forward to the draft rather than the playoffs is proof of that problem. The Devils management needs to find a way forward from here, because while the team has its flaws in other areas, they’re not going anywhere if at least one goalie struggles to stop a beach ball.
What are your thoughts on the Devils’ goaltending situation moving forward; do you foresee the tandem staying the same next season? Are you a fan of the idea of carrying three goalies if it means less sub-par Markstrom performances? Do you think changing the goalie coach could get Marky back to at least average? Could a trade find a way to fix this? Leave any and all commens below and thanks as always for reading!