Is Devils Crease Cursed, For Offseason Revamp Hasn’t Cured Ills?

Ed Mulholland-Imagn Images

New Jersey, we have a problem. A goalie problem. Again.

The Devils have scored 16 goals over their last four games, lighting the lamp at least three times in all of them. Somehow, they came out of it with zero wins.

Actually, it’s not that difficult to trace the area deserving the most derision. Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen rank 51^st and 52^nd, respectively, among the 55 netminders during this span in goals saved above average, per NaturalStatTrick.com.

Two of those defeats came in overtime, including Friday night’s 4-3 loss to the visiting Islanders when Allen couldn’t get across the crease in time to stop Bo Horvat’s one-timer snipe 1:09 into the extra session.

Allen, who was acquired at last season’s trade deadline to provide competent backup services, did rebound from a dreadful performance in his prior outing, Tuesday’s 8-5 drubbing by Tampa Bay, stopping 9 of New York’s 11 high danger scoring opportunities. However, his GSAA was still in negative territory for the game. Aside from the Horvat goal, Islanders power forward Anders Lee was gifted the juiciest of rebounds to put his club up, 2-1, with about six minutes remaining in the first period.

Mistakes like these—not to mention the embarrassment of allowing a goal on Tuesday to Tampa Bay defenseman Janis Moser from inside his own blue line because Allen went behind the net without seeing that the puck took an odd carom off the side boards and into the goal—can’t happen. It’s hard enough when pucks are going past you off screens and/or deflections.

Then again, even on those difficult to follow shot attempts, can we get a save once in a while? Markstrom was acquired this offseason in a trade with Calgary specifically because of his record of success against high danger chances. He led the league in that category among goalies who played at least 35 games last season. His number through his first seven starts with New Jersey is over 100 points lower.   

I get that New Jersey’s puck management hasn’t exactly been pristine this season. While injuries to Brett Pesce and Luke Hughes tested the team’s depth for the first nine games, you can’t pin all the misplays on youth. The Dougie Hamilton/Brenden Dillon pair has been on the ice for 13 goals against in 11 games, more than any other NHL pair (disclaimer: the Devils have played more games than anyone thanks to an early start in Prague). Dillon, with his errant passing, is looking more like the stiff I remember from when he was in Washington four years ago than the steady force he was in Winnipeg the last three seasons.  

Still, goalies are there to bail out their d-men’s gaffes. Or at least they do on other teams. The Devils (5-4-2) have posted a team save percentage below .900 in three of the last four seasons and sit at .880 for the first 11 games of 2024-25.

The Markstrom trade was Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald’s featured move this offseason because it was understood that goaltending was the major issue holding this franchise back from what its dynamic top-end talent could potentially accomplish. For so long, the saying went, “If only the Devils could get average goaltending…” Markstrom had been decidedly above average for the last nine seasons.

Something must happen when a Devils goalie steps in the blue paint. I root for the football Jets, who seem to be cursed by the vision of Super Bowl champion quarterback Joe Namath. After Namath was forced to finish his career ignominiously as a Los Angeles Ram all the way back in 1977, the Jets have been doomed by a lengthy list of awful QBs. Anytime a quarterback had a pretty good year, it was immediately followed by a severe regression. Even Aaron Rodgers, a future Hall-of-Famer, has to date succumbed to whatever is infecting Jets QBs.

See any parallels with the Devils’ goaltending story? Martin Brodeur, the winningest goalie of them all and a three-time Stanley Cup champion, wasn’t retained by the only team he knew in 2014 and ended his career with an abbreviated stint in St. Louis. Ever since, New Jersey has seen a slew of goalies flail at pucks. Like with the Jets, the few netminders who had respectable seasons saw their games disintegrate in short order.

I’m not suggesting that curses are real. It’s not like Namath, who remains an unabashed Jets fan to this day, or Brodeur, a Devils executive, have disavowed their franchises. However, the Devils as an organization have to work harder in determining why they can’t get their goaltending up to standard (could it be inadequate position coaching?), or else they’ll be watching another season go to waste.