Devils Have Four Games to Replace Markstrom; Allen Isn’t the Whole Answer
The New Jersey Devils are not opening camp to find out if Jake Allen is on the roster. They are opening it to find out who plays behind him, how often, and whether the crease they built after Jacob Markstrom can survive an 84-game season without turning into last year’s problem, this time with a cheaper payroll.
Four preseason games. That is the entire on-ice sample before the real schedule starts. The Devils face the New York Islanders at home on Sept. 20. Then the New York Rangers at home on Sept. 21. Then it’s the Rangers again at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 24 and the Islanders at UBS Arena on Sept. 26. No extra dress rehearsals. No fifth look if somebody has a bad night. Under the new CBA, this is the whole exhibition.
Markstrom is gone. The $6 million that was about to kick in is Florida’s problem. What is left in Newark is Allen, Nico Daws, and David Rittich at a combined $3.9 million and a public plan Sunny Mehta has already described as crease-by-committee. Allen said in July he can live with three goalies if the communication is clean. He also said he did not like it the last time he was in one. Both things can be true. Camp has to make them usable for the Devils.
What they are replacing
Markstrom’s last year in the Devils goal was 44 games, 23-19-1, 3.07 goals against, .883 save percentage. That was the worst mark of his career since 2014-15. The team save percentage around him finished at .887. High-danger numbers sat under the league. The extension Tom Fitzgerald handed him in October made the trade a necessity, not a preference.
Mehta moved him to Florida on June 30 with Angus Crookshank and brought back Evan Rodrigues, Jesper Boqvist, and Ben Steeves. No retention. Adding the championship-caliber depth was certainly nice, but the cap relief was the point. So was the admission that the No. 1 the Devils paid for was not a No. 1 last year.
Allen was the better Devil in net. Thirty-seven games, 17-17-2, 2.74, .903, plus-6.3 goals saved above expected. He is also 36, under contract through 2029-30 at $1.8 million, and not a workhorse you hide behind a 55-start plan.
The replacement is not “find the next Markstrom.” It is to prove that a cheap committee can beat what a $6 million starter just posted. The bar is low, and that is the bet the Devils made when they decided not to run it back.
Allen
He already won the first argument. He is the opener until he isn’t.
The Devils have watched him steal games they had no business winning. They have also watched him flatten when the starts stacked. That is the whole Allen file. For the first two games in a row, he has historically been above water. Stretch him into a third and fourth, and the goals saved start leaking. An 84-game calendar with a four-game preseason does not give Sheldon Keefe room to discover that the hard way in November.
What Allen gives you in September is different from what he gives you in March. He is the veteran who has played in this room. He said in July that Daws is big, can move, is willing to learn, and that he wants that mentoring piece. That quote only matters if the Devils staff actually splits the crease instead of handing Allen 50 starts because the other two looked human in the first week.
Allen should get two of the four preseason games. One at home against the Islanders to set the room. One on the road so the staff sees him in a building that is not Prudential. If he is ordinary in both, you do not panic. If he is ordinary and Daws is sharp, the 1A label gets softer before Oct. 1.
Daws
This is the swing.
Three NHL games last season. Two wins, one loss, 2.62, .908, plus-1.6 goals saved above expected in a sample that is too small to trust and too clean to ignore. He has 55 NHL games across four years and a pile of Utica tape. Mehta said out loud that Daws has never been given a real runway. The two-year extension at $1.1 million AAV was the vote of confidence from the Devils GM. Martin Brodeur has said Daws can compete for the net. None of that puts him in the 1A chair on Sept. 16.
Four games likely won’t be enough for Daws to prove all that much. What Daws has to show the Devils is that he can handle a second start in a short window. The knock on him has been the drop when the work comes in a row. that means this audition will extend into the regular season. Previously, occasional starts have looked like an NHL goalie. Consecutive starts have not. At least not for long enough to write him into 30 games.
At some point, the Devils need to give Daws the second night of a back-to-back. That is the test. Tired lineup, no extra rest. If he looks like the prospect Mehta keeps talking about, he is the backup and Rittich is the insurance. If he seems like a goalie who still needs Utica minutes, the committee becomes Allen-Rittich with Daws as the recall.
Rittich
One year. One million. Thirty games with the Islanders last season, 14-10-3, 2.76, .894, two shutouts, plus-6.8 goals saved above expected.
That is a real NHL backup year behind Ilya Sorokin, on a team that gave up a pile of high-danger chances. Rittich was not the reason New York stayed alive. He was the reason they did not fall off a cliff on the nights Sorokin sat. High-danger save percentage sat in a respectable band. He has historically held up through a third start and sagged on a fourth. That profile is almost designed for a committee.
He is 34, so he’s clearly not here to develop. He is here so the Devils do not have to choose between rushing Daws and running Allen into the ground. If Daws wins the look, Rittich is the veteran who takes the back-to-back and the morning skate on the second night. If Daws does not, Rittich is the 1B and the $1 million looks like one of the quieter wins of Mehta’s summer.
The danger is treating him like a camp afterthought because Daws is still somewhat of a prospect. Rittich has more recent NHL volume than Daws by a mile. Four preseason games are short enough that a hot week from the kid can outrun a year of Islanders tape. The Devils should not let that happen unless the tape in red and black is actually better.
Four games, not a season
Here is the split New Jersey should run.
Sept. 20 vs. Islanders: Allen. Home opener. Set the room.
Sept. 21 vs. Rangers: Daws. Second night of a back-to-back. The test.
Sept. 24 at Rangers: Rittich. Road building. See the veteran in a hostile barn.
Sept. 26 at Islanders: Allen or Daws, depending on the first three. If Daws passed the 21st, he gets the finale. If he did not, Allen closes, and Rittich has already made his case.
You can flip the 24th and 26th. You cannot give all four to Allen and call it a competition. Furthermore, you also cannot give Daws two ugly outings and still mention runway like the decision is unfinished. Four games is already too few. Wasting one on a starter who is not competing for the net is how the Devils get to Oct. 1 guessing.
Committee or tandem
The Devils’ crease is very much a committee until somebody forces a tandem.
Allen knows it. He said three good goalies is how you run a team now and that it might even get you more points if you manage it. He also said you feel on the outside when the rotation is sloppy. Keefe’s job in camp is not to pick a hero. It is to decide whether Daws is NHL-ready enough that Rittich can live as the third or whether the safe pair is Allen-Rittich and Daws starts the year as a phone call.
Carrying three on the opening-night roster is possible. It is also how practices get weird and how a $1 million veteran starts asking what his job is. The cleaner October for the Devils is two on the roster and one in Utica, with the third ready when the first back-to-back hits. That third is Rittich if Daws wins. It is Daws if he does not.
Cap-wise the room is already there. $3.9 million for three goalies against $6 million for the one they just traded. That math only helps if the save percentage is better than .883. A committee that posts .900 as a group is a win. A committee that posts .890 and a pile of “we like the process” quotes is last year with different names.
The Hellebuyck noise
There is a cleaner answer than Allen, Daws, or Rittich, and it is not walking into camp.
Connor Hellebuyck asked out of Winnipeg. He is still the closest thing the league has to a true No. 1 — three Vezinas, Olympic gold last winter, and seven years left at $8.5 million. Last season was the ugly one, a .895 and a 23-23-11 mark after knee surgery, and it did not change the market. Buffalo, Carolina, Florida, San Jose, and Vegas have all been in the pile. So have the Devils. Jeff Marek had New Jersey in a three-way hypothetical again this week.
A Hellebuyck trade ends the crease-by-committee. You would not be writing four-game splits. You would be writing how many starts Allen gets as a $1.8 million safety net and whether Daws’s runway moves to Utica for a year, unless he goes to Winnipeg in the hypothetical. Rittich becomes the piece you move or bury.
It is also not happening this week.
The hit is $8.5 million. The Devils do not have that sitting in spare change after Anthony Mantha and Luke Evangelista. You would have to send real salary back — and real future — at the same moment the Quinn Hughes file is still open. Minnesota has spent the last month saying trade talk with New Jersey is fiction. Hughes is still unsigned. Elliotte Friedman has noted how quiet those talks have been. Both things can be true: the Wild want to sign him, and Mehta cannot empty the cupboard for a goalie while there is even a sliver that the other Hughes becomes available in December or next July.
A Hellebuyck deal now would be the Devils choosing the crease over the last live star-defenseman path they have. That is a winter decision if Winnipeg’s price falls. It is not a Sept. 16 decision. Camp is still Allen, Daws, and Rittich. Pretending otherwise is how you skip the four games that are actually played.
What would change the call
Hellebuyck lands in Newark. Then this column is obsolete and the committee is a bridge the Devils already burned.
Short of that, Daws looks like the best of the three through two games. Then you lean tandem, Allen-Daws, and Rittich is the spare part you still need in January.
Allen has a clunker and Rittich steals the Garden game. Then the 1A talk gets quieter and you start talking about a true split.
Somebody gets hurt in camp. The whole column becomes two names and perhaps Jakub Malek gets a look.
The skaters in front of them are a mess for two nights and every goalie looks ordinary. Then you do not overreact to the goals against. You watch rebound control, high-danger saves, how they play the first rush after a lost draw. Preseason goals against will lie. Process will not, not entirely.
The call
Allen opens. Daws is the goalie this camp is actually about. Rittich is the reason the Devils can afford to find out.
Hellebuyck would end the argument. He is not likely walking into the Prudential Center on Sept. 20, however. Four games will not replace Markstrom. An 84-game season might, if the committee is a real plan and not a slogan waiting on Winnipeg. Sept. 20 is the first night the argument leaves the press conference and hits the ice. That is the only sample the Devils built themselves.