The New Jersey Devils have lost four games this season out of the first thirteen they have played. Coincidentally, all four of those games have something in common.
What is that, you might ask?
The Devils tendency to give up the first goal within the first five minutes of the game.
It’s something that has already happened to this Devils team six times in thirteen contests in the first few weeks of the season, and that number jumps to seven if I expand that arbitrary “first five minutes” threshold to “first seven minutes” to include the goal John Tavares scored in the Toronto game that also put the Devils in a 1-0 hole. In almost half of the Devils games thus far in 2025-26, they’re immediately digging themselves a 1-0 hole that they now have to spend the remaining 55-ish or so minutes digging themselves out of.
It happened on Opening Night against a Carolina team that this Devils team still needs to show that they can beat in a best-of-seven playoff format.
It happened a couple times during the eight-game winning streak, but the Devils were able to overcome it in the Florida and San Jose games at Prudential Center.
It also happened three times on the now concluded California (plus Colorado) road trip. It happened in Colorado, San Jose, and Anaheim. The Devils lost all three games.
One can go back and look at the specifics of each game if they so choose to try to find a common thread. That common thread might be as simple as a defensive breakdown or an unlucky bounce or shoddy goaltending. I’m sure there’s a theme somewhere in there that connects all of them, but frankly, I don’t really care what it is. To me, its as simple as this.
These Devils haven’t shown yet that they can consistently start games on time.
I’m not even necessarily asking the Devils to score the first goal in the first few minutes. Of course, its nice when they actually do and they don’t have to chase the game the rest of the way as a result. But sometimes, its ok to battle to a 0-0 draw through the first 20 minutes.
What’s not ok is to allow William Eklund to score 2:25 into the game on home ice, and then a week later, he scores 42 seconds into the contest the next time you see him.
This isn’t a knock on Eklund, who is a very talented young player and might be finally putting it all together on a Sharks team that is better than their record would indicate. But the fact the same player is doing it to you twice in the span of a week before fans even have a chance to settle into their seats is a concern.
Sheldon Keefe alluded to injuries and fatigue catching up to the Devils when he spoke postgame after the loss to Anaheim, and there might be some truth to that. The Devils had played eight games in a span of thirteen days, with half of those coming on a long road trip. Brett Pesce and Cody Glass didn’t make the trip, and Connor Brown was banged up enough where he didn’t play in either of the games in Southern California. The Devils resiliency and depth have certainly been tested in the early portion of the season.
But citing injuries and the schedule as reasons is teetering closely to making excuses, and I don’t really have the time or patience for excuses. Especially when I ranted last year about how this team has consistently shown that they don’t manage or handle success all that well.
Every team is dealing with injuries. And while I’m not suggesting that the Devils don’t miss Pesce and Glass (and Evgenii Dadonov and Johnathan Kovacevic while we’re at it), the reality is that life goes on in the NHL. There are teams out there that have things far worse than the Devils right now. The Devils have been in far worse positions health-wise in the past than they are right now. Nobody is going to feel sympathetic that the Devils are missing players, and vice versa.
The schedule isn’t going to change barring an act of God. There will be those stretches where the Devils play three games in four nights, all in different cities. There will be instances where they’re tired, but you still have to grind through it. You still have to go out there and perform and do your job, and if you’re not ready from the opening faceoff, there’s too much talent across the league where even the worst teams are more than capable of making you pay for those mistakes.
It’s not that I doubt the Devils ability to come back if they do allow the first goal. The Devils have shown they can score goals in bunches, as they’re among the league leaders in goals per game. They’ve shown that their power play is still elite, as it currently sits 4th in the NHL (as of this writing). They lead the league in short-handed goals. They’re among the league leaders in empty-net goals, which is a testament to the fact that they have those leads where they’re in a position to make the other team pull their goaltender. And this is with a few notable guys on the roster who have yet to get going from a “finding the back of the net” perspective.
To me though, this comes back to the maturation of this group. And full disclaimer….get used to me bringing this up every week or every other week because it’s going to be a theme for me pertaining to this group this season. I’m going to hold this group to a certain standard, and it’s how I’m ultimately going to judge this team when its all said and done.
This road trip doesn’t, or at least it shouldn’t, give fuel to those people who are dying to say “see, this group is fraudulent and the same problems that have been there are still there”. But if the Devils want to be taken seriously as a contender, they do need to be consistently better than what they showed this past week. Part of that is being on top of your game and being ready to go from the drop of the puck to the final horn. If you get beat, you get beat. That’s going to happen. This is the hardest league in the world with the best players in the world, and the other team is trying to win the game. But you can’t beat yourselves consistently either, even if you have shown that you can bounce back, play well, get that equalizer, and then its off to the races.
The Devils aren’t necessarily putting hockey games out of reach by allowing an early goal as frequently as they have, but why make things harder for yourself than it needs to be? By bringing the right level of compete, urgency and energy earlier in these contests, and doing it consistently, they set themselves up better for success. That’s the next step that this group needs to take if they want to be considered one of the elite teams in the NHL.