Devils’ Deference To Markstrom Must End
Brown Delivering For Devils
The Devils so want Jacob Markstrom to grab the reins as their No. 1 goalie. They just gave him a two-yar extension at a $6 million AAV. Despite a slew of ugly Markstrom outings, Head Coach Sheldon Keefe keeps going back to him almost every other game in the hope that he can regain his old form.
The deference has to stop. If Markstrom is between the pipes when the Devils skate in Utah on Friday night, Keefe needs to have his head examined.
For Jake Allen, the nominal “backup”, turned in his second brilliant performance in a row in New Jersey’s nailbiting 2-1 shootout victory at Las Vegas on Wednesday night. In this Battle of The Missing Stars, Allen saved 3.71 goals over expected, according to MoneyPuck.com. And that didn’t include his three straight saves during the skills competition.
Though the Golden Knights were missing center Jack Eichel and defenseman Shea Theodore, they created chances galore. Allen, fortunately, kept them off the scoreboard until Pavel Dorofeyev roofed one on a power play (thanks to a horrible whistle after a Vegas player skated over Juho Lammikko’s stick) with a little over four minutes remaining. Counting Saturday’s 4-1 win over visiting Anaheim, Allen has stopped 66 of his last 68 shots, including all 21 that NaturalStatTrick.com classified as high danger shots.
I think that qualifies as the “hot goalie” that you ride until circumstances change.
As things stand, the Devils (19-14-1) tenuously occupy the final Wild Card seed, equidistant from Metropolitan Division leader Carolina and Eastern Conference cellar dweller Buffalo. That could drastically change with another bad week—New Jersey sat atop the East as recently as Black Friday.
With New Jersey’s lineup decimated—though defenseman Brett Pesce returned to action on Wednesday, the team is still absent major components Jack Hughes, Timo Meier, Arseny Gritsyuk, and Simon Nemec plus Evgenii Dadonov, Johnathan Kovacevic, and Zach MacEwen—each game presents a miniscule margin for error. Unfortunately, too many nights have seen the Devils’ goaltending fail to come close to matching that standard.
That includes Allen as well—he had lost three straight starts prior to the Anaheim game—but Markstrom has had just three games out of 14 where he gave up fewer than three goals since his return from a lower body injury on October 28. Not all of them were Markstrom’s fault, but there always seemed to be a few each game that made Devils fans go, “We really could have used a save there.” Per NST, Markstrom ranks 79th among 83 goalies with a minus-10.57 goals saved above average this season.
At this stage, I think Devils fans would rather see the team call up Nico Daws from AHL Utica to take the starts designated for Markstrom. Barring another injury, that isn’t going to happen. And Keefe will continue to give Markstrom every opportunity to get out of his funk.
I’m not expecting Allen’s magical run to last long—the problem with leaning heavily on him is that he, like Markstrom, is 35. In this case, though, with the Devils having Thursday off, Allen should get the nod for at least the Utah game.
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It would be inaccurate to state that, “As Connor Brown goes, so goes the Devils.” New Jersey went 5-1-1 with Brown sidelined by an upper body injury in early November.
However, the Devils seem to get a big lift any time Brown, 31, produces. The relatively unheralded free agent acquisition is a point-a-game player (8 goals and 6 assists) in 14 Devils wins this season. In their 13 defeats with him in the lineup, he has gone pointless in all of them. To put it another way, the Devils have won only four games where Brown was active but shut out of the scoresheet.
Brown plays the heavy, get-to-the-inside game that the organization craves and has been useful on both special teams. His steal and drive to the net created New Jersey’s sole goal on Wednesday. Signing him was a steal in its own right.
General Manager Tom Fitzgerald has been (appropriately, in my opinion) maligned for his failures to act during troubled times, especially this season when Vancouver passed on his offer last week on All-World defenseman Quinn Hughes, trading him to Minnesota instead. Reportedly, it was Fitzgerald’s inability to move salaries out to comply with the league’s cap that handcuffed the Devils—and that was because Fitzgerald had previously doled out no-move/no-trade clauses in 14 players’ contracts, including that of aging wing Ondrej Palat.
Who knows, the 4-year, $12 million contract Fitzgerald gave to Brown in the offseason might end up aging as well as Palat’s, albeit at half the cost. But so far, Brown is delivering for the Devils.