The New Jersey Devils went out and got Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen to bolster their goaltending. So far, it’s working out better than last season. Can the pair continue to stabilize the team?
The biggest plague to the New Jersey Devils 2023-24 season has been talked to death. Nothing went as planned last season, but the goaltending struggled to stop a beach ball from going in to the net, never mind a puck. The team began to take steps in addressing it last season when they acquired Jake Allen from the Montreal Canadiens. The bigger piece of the puzzle was added this past summer when Jacob Markstrom was brought over from the Calgary Flames. All they needed to do was be better than last season’s regulars; surely that shouldn’t be too hard, right?
Well…so far, they’ve cleared that bar. Not exactly a high jump, but a necessary bar to clear anyway.
Through 19 games, you could argue that the numbers could be better. Markstrom sports only a .908 save percentage across the 13 appearances he’s made. Allen has fared a bit better with a .914, but he’s played in only six contests. It’s a pretty good save percentage, but it could drop drastically with just one sub-par performance. Another factor that might have some concerned is that neither is performing spectacularly in goals saved above expected. While Allen is a positive three, Markstrom is a negative one according to their stats on MoneyPuck. I will however, take the early returns of the goalies that are ranked 18th and 44th out of 74 in GSAE over the ones who finished 65th (Nico Daws), 72nd (Akira Schmid) and 83rd (Vitek Vanecek) out of 98 by the end of last season.
For the most part, both Markstrom and Allen have met the expectation of being above league average. I spoke about this way back in my thoughts in our season preview predictions that the Devils needed this to succeed. Right now, of 54 NHL goalies to play at least five games, Allen 11th in save percentage and Markstrom is 19th. This is why I would classify our tandem right now as “slightly above” league average: their GSAE numbers aren’t fantastic, but their save percentages are both in the upper half of league regulars.
I do have some worry over the fluctuations from performance to performance from both goalies. There’s games where they will shut out opponents or stand on their heads and bring the Devils to a win. Then the next game, they get lit up, allowing some bad goals in the process. There’s still time for all of that to equalize, and in today’s NHL, no goalie is immune to having a bad game either. With this pair, we haven’t really seen a string of bad games in a row though, which has been another improvement. Heck, they even got the Devils a small win streak and broke up Florida’s seven game win streak!
To put all of this simply, the Devils goaltending hasn’t been consistently fabulous this season, however it is right now miles ahead of what the team got last year. The improvement of the defense and growth of some younger players aided that, but just having goalies who are stopping more pucks had made the necessary impact as well. Time will tell what the rest of 2024-25 holds for the New Jersey Devils, but if they can shore up some of the mistakes, there’s no reason to believe the goaltending can’t be a bigger strength as the season progresses.
What are your thoughts on the play of Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen in net? Are you happy/mostly happy with the results they’ve produced so far? Are any of the stats above, or other related stats giving you cause for concern? Do you believe the goalies can play even better as the season goes on? Leave any and all thoughts below and thanks as always for reading!