New Jersey Devils Should Be Happy To Have Mackenzie Blackwood
The Devils should be happy to have a great goalie in Mackenzie Blackwood.
The New Jersey Devils have a pretty dominant history when it comes to the last line of defense. The goaltender is one of the most crucial positions in all of the sports. The Devils had the greatest of all time in Martin Brodeur for a very long time, and Cory Schneider was very good for a while after that. In the present, however, the net seems to belong to Mackenzie Blackwood going forward and Devils fans are thrilled to have him there.
The New York Rangers and New York Islanders are both teams in the area with fancy new goalie prospects making a lot of noise. The Rangers have Igor Shesterkin coming in and the Islanders just signed Ilya Sorokin. These are two very good goalies, but the Devils are happy with Blackwood and he should be able to keep up with guys like that for the duration of their primes.
Blackwood took over as the starter this season without any doubt not long into the year. Keith Kinkaid was traded at the beginning of 2019 so it was Blackwood and Schneider going forward from there. Schneider is not what he once was so Blackwood is the guy going forward. In December of 2019, he really started to take off.
His stats were pretty good in 2019-20 despite being on a team that was awful in front of him. He had a 2.77 goals-against average which is okay but can use improvement. The fact that he had a very good .915 save percentage to go with it makes it seem like his goals-against had a lot to do with the fact that Devils were bad defensively and he faced a lot of shots. He also had a 22-14-8 record on a team that finished with a record of 28-29-12. It makes you wonder how the season would have gone if they had some competent backup goaltending.
Hot. Can Lindy Ruff impact the Devils' defenseman?. light
All of these teams in the Metropolitan Division have good young goalies, and the Devils are one of them. If they can fix a lot of the depth in front of him and get him a good backup, this team can start to take big strides. We are all happy that Blackwood is in the mix and ready to help them win some hockey games.