New Jersey Devils: 3 Options At Goaltender Behind Mackenzie Blackwood

With Corey Crawford’s absence, the New Jersey Devils have options.

First and foremost, we aren’t going to speculate on Corey Crawford and when he may come back to the New Jersey Devils. We all hope that he comes back healthy and happy and better than ever. That is the ideal situation. Crawford is a wonderful hockey player, a proven winner, and someone who would be awesome for the locker room. However, there’s a chance that it might not work out that way.

The Devils currently have four goalies under contract. With the new rules for taxi squads, they are required to have five once the Binghamton/Newark Devils season starts (two in NHL, two in AHL, one taxi squad). For the sake of argument, let’s say the Devils are adding a goalie in this process in order to be compliant.

There are actually options here for the Devils. No, we’re not talking about free agency. There’s like nothing there for the Devils. The best option would be Jimmy Howard, who was terrible for the Detroit Red Wings last season, or Scott Darling, who was just cut from his PTO on Friday. Other than that, it’s players like Mike Condon or others that likely aren’t even AHL worthy.

It’s rough out there for a goaltender market that once had Braden Holtby, Jakob Markstrom, Henrik Lundqvist, Thomas Greiss, Cam Talbot, and Ryan Miller all available. Now, the cupboard is barren.

Things are rough behind Mackenzie Blackwood at this moment. Scott Wedgewood was a nice third option, but as the only backup, he’s not ideal. The Devils need to find a way to push Wedgewood down as a taxi squad/injury replacement. Obviously, the options aren’t as fruitful as they were a month ago, but there are options.

1. Trade

This one will be tough to pull off, but the Devils have traded for depth goalies three times in the last three seasons. The one time it worked out best is when they traded for Eddie Lack in 2017-18. He wasn’t great for the whole time, but he had a few decent performances and one astronomical performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning that ended up pushing them to another level after the New Year. They also traded for Louis Domingue and Zane McIntyre last season.

This season, things are a little different. Teams are required to carry at least three goalies, so depth is important. Also, with the shortened season, an injury to a goalie might derail a team’s season with only 56 games to play.

However, there are a few teams that decided not to go through with their AHL seasons, so there are players available there. An AHL-caliber goalie can’t cost that much on the trade market, even this season. The Devils have an extra 5th-round pick in 2022 thanks to a Keith Kinkaid trade. It would be ironic if they used that to get themselves a goalie who can work as a stopgap.

The Florida Panthers are a very interesting team here. They have Sergei Bobrovsky with seven years left on his deal. They also have World Juniors hero Spencer Knight waiting in the wings to eventually take the net. Right now, Chris Driedger is slated to be the backup. They have three other goalies signed, but they aren’t having the Charlotte Checkers take part in the AHL season. They might be willing to part with Philippe Desrosiers, who was actually really good in the AHL last season. He had a .916 save percentage with the Springfield Thunderbirds. They just re-signed him, but that was before they decided not to have an AHL season.

2. Waivers

Teams have to put goalies through waivers to get them to the taxi squad if they needed to do the same thing to get them to the AHL. That means the Devils still have a shot to get a goalie for free, but it would take making another team really mad in the process. The Devils are looking for teams who think they have their goalie situation set, and then they will come in and blow it up completely.

Still, these are desperate times for the Devils, and this isn’t a time to make friends. It’s all business at this point, and the Devils cannot worry about what the other 30 teams think of their decisions. Hockey has a short memory, and a GM won’t worry about past transgressions when trying to make future deals.

So, the Devils can look at players who might be good enough to be a backup from around the league. One interesting team to pay attention to is the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have Frederick Anderson, Jack Campbell, and Aaron Dell. Dell is likely the odd-man-out here, and he’d have to go on waivers to go to the taxi squad or the AHL. They also have Michael Hutchinson who would have to go through waivers.

The Washington Capitals also have Craig Anderson and Pheonix Copley trying to win the team’s backup position. Both would have to go through waivers and would be a nice addition to the Devils at this point.