The New Jersey Devils broke major news on Friday night, announcing they re-signed goalie Jacob Markstrom to a two-year, $12 million contract. On paper, a $6 million AAV is not bad for a starting goalie, but there are a lot of questions surrounding who the Devils are going to get throughout the contract.
Apparently, the Devils were in hard negotiations with Markstrom’s team, who was looking for a much longer term. He’s already 35 years old. In two years when this contract ends, he will be 38 years old.
That’s a really old goalie. New Jersey Devils fans uniquely have memory of a 40-year-old Martin Brodeur taking his team to the Stanley Cup Final, but that’s a once-in-a-generation occurrence. We can’t assume Markstrom won’t fall off like hundreds of goalies before him did in their late 30s.
Still, the issue with this contract is the impact it’s going to have on the Devils next offseason. This has a chance to be a transformative offseason for the Devils, but this extension makes it a little harder.
Listen, we expected some kind of extension for Markstrom, so the different between $5 million and $6 million isn’t huge, but as we saw with the Luke Hughes extension talks this offseason, it does make a difference.
According to Puck Pedia, the Devils before the Markstrom extension were expected to have a little more than $16 million in cap space. The Markstrom deal immediately drops that to $10 million. The Devils have just under $94 million in cap commitments next season.
This is without new contracts for Arseny Gristyuk, Simon Nemec, and Paul Cotter. Will those three young players demand $10 million by themselves? It’s not crazy to consider. Let’s say they want to sign both Nemec and Cotter to bridge deals. There’s a possibility that Nemec gets $3 million per season and Cotter gets $2 million.
Is it out of the question the Devils sign Gritsyuk to a $5 million a year deal? These are the prices it takes to keep players in 2025. Martin Necas just got $11.5 million per season. The contracts are going higher and higher for all players down the lineup.
Then, there’s the elephant in the room, and that’s Quinn Hughes. This deal would coincide with the eldest Hughes brother’s free agency, limiting that cap space to $47 million. It sounds like a lot (and it is), but the Devils also need to re-sign Nico Hischier that offseason. If they both get north of $10 million (they will), then we’re talking about $25 million in space minimum without any other signings or re-signings.
That's not even including the possibility of adding him in a trade, but we assume that if the Devils are trading for Quinn Hughes, they will be sending money out in the deal to make it work.
This extension might work out. Markstrom has been better than his numbers suggest, even if the start of the season has been about as bad as it could be. If he brings the Devils to the Eastern Conference Finals this year, nobody will care about the extension. However, that’s a big what if, and it’s an important position to mess around with.