The New Jersey Devils headed into their building on Sunday looking to start adding fuel to the plausibility of a miracle run to the playoffs. With a win, their chances would skyrocket to nearly 10%.
Instead, their four-game heater was snapped as they got blanked 3-0 by the Detroit Red Wings. Now their playoff odds stand at just 1.16%, per Moneypuck.
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Jacob Markstrom Not the Issue
There’s no doubt that Jacob Markstrom had an incredibly rough start to the 2025-26 season. In his first nine games, he had just one individual performance above an .889 save percentage (SV%). By New Year’s, his .884 SV% ranked just 30th out of 33 regular goalies (20+ games played).
Between that and the Devils starting to free-fall following an early eight-game win streak, Markstrom became an easy scapegoat for the fanbase. Compounding the issue, he gave up nine goals to the New York Islanders on Jan. 6, a loss so bad he called it “embarrassing” and apologized to the fanbase.
While that dreadful game plummeted his already-rough counting stats at the time, the reality is that Markstrom has mostly been rock solid since the ball dropped in Times Square. Tonight, Markstrom started his fifth game in a row. While head coach Sheldon Keefe was given some heat for playing him this much — especially with it being the latter part of a back-to-back, Markstrom was serviceable, stopping 27 of 30 shots (.900%).
They all count the same, but if you remove just that single catastrophe on Long Island, Markstrom has a very respectable .909 SV% in the other 15 games this calendar year, which would place him tenth among 40 goalies to play 10+ games in that span.
Rough Finishing Luck Returns, but Need to Generate More
During their four-game streak, the Devils increased their scoring chances by 34.7% and their 35.3 scoring chances per 60 (SCF/60) was the best mark in the league during that span. Unfortunately for them, today looked more like a majority of their games where they mightily struggled to finish.
They led in scoring chances (19-11), yet only three of them were high danger. That signals a team not getting into the middle of the ice as frequently as they’d wish.
“I think that [Detroit] plays differently than the last couple teams we saw,” said forward Connor Brown. “They’re up on us a little bit more, and I think we didn’t quite adjust as smoothly as I think we should have. A little bit too much perimeter play for us, too. I would have liked to see guys in the inside a little more. That being said, would have been nice to have a bounce come our way.”
Per Natural Stat Trick, they scored minus-2.18 goals above expected. Even if they finished at an average rate, they wouldn’t have won.
“We just didn’t have it tonight,” said Keefe postgame. “We were slow. We were second a lot. You know, we had a little bit of jump early but ran out of gas too quickly in a game that you needed the gas.”
At the end of the day, with time running out on the season, results are the only thing that matters.
Moving Forward
The Devils — now 32-30-2 — will get a bit of a break before returning home on Thursday, Mar. 12 to face the Calgary Flames (7:00 PM EDT).
