Allen’s Hot Goaltending Too Little, Too Late For Devils? Too Soon to Tell
Jake Allen’s first period in net for the Devils following his trade from Montreal on March 8 brought a sense of déjà vu, and not in a good way.
Instead of providing a cure for New Jersey’ season-long doldrums at the goalie position, Allen surrendered two goals on the first three shots the host Stars threw at him, including an egregious one from the right wing corner by Dallas center Craig Smith. He seemed to be fighting the puck for the rest of the frame, struggling to get into his set position and leaving juicy rebounds.
The awful first impression reinforced my concern that he was exactly who I thought he was when Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald gave up a conditional third-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, which can be upgraded to a 2 if Allen plays at least 40 games and he makes the playoffs next season. He had been 6-12-3 for Montreal with a lousy .892 save percentage and registered a minus-7.87 goals save above average metric as measured by NaturalStatTrick.com.
In other words, he had been no better than Vitek Vanecek, Akira Schmid, and Nico Daws, New Jersey’s rotating trio who topped the list of the culprits behind the team’s disappointing results. Here we go again, I thought. Different name, same garbage.
I don’t know what transpired in between periods that night in Dallas, but Allen has been a different goalie since. He blanked the Stars the rest of the way to earn a 6-2 victory and commenced a stretch where he stopped 122 of the nest 127 shots (.961 save percentage) he faced, including 18 of 19 in New Jersey’s impressive 4-1 win over Central Division-leading Winnipeg on Thursday night at Prudential Center. It was Allen’s third victory in four starts for his new club.
From my vantage, Allen has been calmer in net during the three-plus games since his early jitters, though I’d like to see him do better at steering rebounds away from the net front. But what’s most important is that he has been making saves at critical junctures. Aside from Jack Eichel’s snipe midway through the third period in Vegas that broke a 1-1 tie last Sunday, Allen has been the stout last line of defense the Devils have sorely needed all season. His 5.59 GSAA ranks second among NHL goalies in the small sample size of games played following the deadline, per NST. Winnipeg might not have peppered Allen’s net on Thursday, but they did have some chances. Allen robbed former Devil Tyler Toffoli twice, which I found atypically satisfying given where this team stands.
For all of Allen’s good work, New Jersey (34-32-4) still sits in 11th place in the Eastern Conference and six points behind Detroit for the final Wild Card slot. These last two Devils wins certainly wee enjoyable, but it doesn’t erase how wildly inconsistent they’ve been virtually all season. Their previous two-game winning streak was over a month ago and you’d have to go back to late December to find their most recent three-game winning streak, their season high.
For those seething at Fitzgerald for waiting too long to pull the trigger on a goalie trade, that the Devils would surely have been playoff-bound had he done so sooner, let’s wait a bit before we cement a conclusive report. It’s not like a Devils goalie hasn’t gone through short-lived hot streaks before—Daws won three out of four straight February starts before the coaching staff ran him and his surgically repaired hip into the ground. Daws is now back at AHL Utica.
The “too little, too late” argument will be tested over the Devils’ final 12 games, which includes three against high-flying Toronto, the NHL’s second-ranked goal producer per game, and another at the Rangers, the East’s second seed. If I were to guess, Allen and Kaapo Kahkonen, a pending free agent who was also acquired at the deadline in exchange for Vanecek, will split the weekend back-to-back versus Ottawa and the Islanders, with Allen getting the nod for Sunday’s tougher game on Long Island.
Then again, this organization’s model tells them to ride the hot hand, no matter what. Until it cools off, which, unfortunately, it has almost always done since the heyday of Martin Brodeur.