Sheldon Keefe Rips Devils, Markstrom Effort in Shutout vs. Blues ‘Not Good Enough’

So much for the celebration of Jacob Markstrom’s 500th career NHL game. After the ceremony that honored the New Jersey Devils goaltender, the St. Louis Blues quickly went to work and took the wind out of the Devils’ sails.

This wasn’t a game they lost because they missed the services of Timo Meier.

On the back of their new coach bump, head coach Jim Montgomery had the Blues fired up and ready to play. That wasn’t so much the case for Sheldon Keefe‘s Devils, and he made it be known in their 3-0 shutout loss to the Blues.

Let’s get to how it happened.

Devils Recap

The Blues struck as fast as the puck dropped, taking a 1–0 lead nine seconds into play on the stick of Robert Thomas. St. Louis went on to score two more times, both goals scored by Dylan Holloway nearly 10 minutes apart from each other, and the Devils headed into the first intermission down 3-0.

The Blues proceeded to collect just eight more shots across the ensuing 40 minutes. Yet, the Devils failed to find the back of the net despite heavily outshooting St. Louis 32-18, as Jordan Binnington collected the shutout victory.

Markstrom’s ceremony was quickly ruined, making 15 saves on 18 shots.

Takeaways

Gotta Help Yourself

There’s no denying there was some questionable officiating in the opening frame. Certainly, the referee’s missed a tripping call when Pavel Buchnevich got his stick under the skate of Nico Hischier causing him to blow a tire which led to St. Louis’ first goal. After there was no call, there’s nothing the Devils could have done about that one.

However, the second and third goals? Brett Pesce was thrown to the ice on a cross-check by Brayden Schenn, which opened up some ice for Dylan Holloway. However, it was a domino effect as Jonas Siegenthaler cross-checked Schenn into Pesce pushing the Devils’ defenseman out of position. Perhaps Pesce should have taken more initiative to attack Holloway, with Siegenthaler covering Schenn at the top of the crease.

Lastly, Holloway’s second goal was misplayed all around. The initial shot by Colton Parayko made four Devils defenders look below the goal line and they all lost the puck. Holloway easily slipped into a high-danger zone to deposit the puck and triple the Blues’ lead.

Could Markstrom have stopped one of those pucks? Perhaps, but the defense was certainly sloppy with a dash of questionable officiating to open up Wednesday night’s contest.

“When things aren’t going the way that you want, we got to find other ways to score,” Stefan Noesen said. “We probably were a little too perimeter, a little too passive at times. It’s a hard league to score goals. Trust me, it’s, it’s a hard League, right? So just got to find different ways to score, and maybe we were a little too cute overall. I know we out shot them, but sometimes it didn’t feel like that.”

Tough Night For Markstrom

The Devils are certainly going to need Markstrom to be better.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. The Devils bought Markstrom because of his pedigree in high-danger situations. Yet, the one high-danger shot he faced beat him, which means the other two were medium to low-danger shots.

Markstrom’s shown some instability in the Devils’ crease. Some nights he’s locked in. Other nights he’s leaking oil.

The Devils didn’t give the Blues much to work with in the second and third periods. But his start, much like the rest of New Jersey, set the Devils back before they could even find their footing.

Keefe was shot to open the press conference on what went wrong with the Devils Wednesday night.

“Not good enough,” the Devils head coach muttered.

He doubled down on that notion regarding the Devils goaltender

“[He] was like everybody else, not good enough at the start,” Keefe said of Markstrom.

Markstrom ended the night with -1.57 saves above expected.

The Devils simply weren’t ready to play on Wednesday, and were perhaps already thinking about their Thanksgiving plates on Thursday.

They’ll have a chance to course correct on Friday when they visit the Detroit Red Wings.

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