Jacob Markstrom might have been a product of a bad New Jersey Devils team

The New Jersey Devils finally won a game on Saturday evening. They had a lot go right, which is incredibly rare for the 2025-26 season. Timo Meier was incredible and led the Devils to their first goal of the game, giving them a second-period lead they would never give up. Jack Hughes has had a busy week, but that hasn’t stopped him from being great on the ice. 

One player who was really good is Jacob Markstrom. The Devils' goalie has been pretty good for a long time. He stepped up in a big way for Team Sweden and took the starting job away from Filip Gustavsson. He was great against the Americans, almost stopping them from winning the gold medal on his own. 

Imagine a world where Jack Hughes didn’t score the Golden Goal? Jacob Markstrom was almost responsible for a different history. 

Returning to the Devils, the hope was that we’d see a different Markstrom, and for the most part, we have. On Saturday, the Devils recorded their first win of February on the last day of the month. 

Markstrom was stellar against the St. Louis Blues. He stopped 25 of 26 shots, and that one goal against was when Markstrom was nowhere near the net. He made a mistake by leaving the net, and then a Blues player blocked him from getting back to the net to establish himself. It was a mistake, but it was a situation that was more unfortunate than anything.

As of Saturday, Markstrom still has a -4.70 goals saved above average. That’s obviously not good, but it’s actually better than 20 other goalies who played this season. Ironically enough, when looking at Markstrom’s GSAA at 5v5 since the start of the calendar year, he’s in the same exact spot (20 players have a worse GSAA). 

Is this Markstrom playing badly, or are the Devils putting Markstrom in a bad position? If anything, it’s definitely bad vibes, which have impacted the Devils since November. 

We could jump into more statistics, but we think this is actually pretty clear. Markstrom has been bad this season, but he’s been better lately. The Devils should still be mad about that two-year extension.