The New Jersey Devils will be rolling with a bit of an unusual arrangement this season. The team will be counting on three goalies to man the crease.
That situation became apparent when the club traded Jacob Markstrom to the Florida Panthers this summer. The move was a wise one. Getting rid of Markstrom, especially for the pieces in return, was one of the good first moves Sunny Mehta made.
However, the flipside to this situation is that the Devils don’t really have a clear-cut starting goalie. And it led to the prospect of experimenting with a three-headed monster: Jake Allen, David Rittich, and Nico Daws.
If this experiment is to have any hope for success, Daws has to work out. The 25-year-old has seemingly been on the cusp of taking over at the NHL level for years now. With Markstrom gone, the time has come for Daws to show he’s the real deal.
Yes, the Devils have two veteran goalies to fall back on. There’s nothing wrong with a tandem of Rittich and Allen. If anything, it’s a solid, if unspectacular, tandem. If the Devils play well in front of any of their goalies, well, they can get by with Allen and Rittich.
But would that tandem be good enough to get them through four rounds of playoff action?
That’s an entirely different question. That’s why Daws has to take this opportunity and run with it. If he can, the Devils can keep both Allen and Rittich as insurance, just in case the young goalie needs to take a step back every once in a while.
Devils experiment might just work out after all
The idea of rolling with three goalies in the NHL is much like when baseball teams expanded their starting rotations from four pitchers to five. When that happened in the late 70s, most pundits cursed in anger.
More and more, teams are realizing the benefit of having three capable goalies on the roster. While the argument against the five-man rotation applies to a three-goalie system, the fact is that NHL teams can no longer afford to rely on just one guy to carry the load.
Back in the day, starting pitchers were expected to throw 300 innings a season. If a guy didn’t get into the seventh inning, the outing was considered a waste.
Similarly, starting goalies were expected to play close to 70 games each season. In fact, backup goalies got as many as 20 games per season.
Those days are long gone. True starting goalies nowadays play around 50 games. That leaves about 35 games for backups to fill in.
So, wouldn’t it make sense to carry three netminders?
If Daws can give the Devils 50 solid starts, shouldn’t that be enough to get them close to a playoff spot? Would expecting Allen and Rittich to play well in the remaining 35 games be too much to ask?
Let’s see how the Devils handle this. In a perfect world, Daws would just run with the starting job. Jake Allen would be a solid backup, with Rittich likely landing on waivers.
If Daws can’t emerge as the true number-one guy the Devils hope he becomes, the goaltending equation could drastically change in New Jersey.
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