The New Jersey Devils are going into the 2026-27 season with an interesting goalie situation. A three-person goalie rotation has become four after the Devils claimed Remi Poirier from the Dallas Stars, adding competition with Jake Allen, Nico Daws, and David Rittich. Poirier is a goalie that many are excited about, but he’s not exactly proven.
The Devils are in this situation because they traded Jacob Markstrom. Sunny Mehta was trying to get out of the two-year, $6 million contract extension Tom Fitzgerald signed before he was let go.
Markstrom was terrible for the Devils last season. There’s no other way to put it. A team that went two decades with Martin Brodeur has not had good goaltending since the heyday of Cory Schneider. Once Schneider started to deal with hip issues, it has been a Cleveland Browns QB-level of inequities in net.
Markstrom was just the latest chapter of failure. He was one of the worst starting goalies in the league statistically last season. Despite his issues, the Panthers were interested in making him their Sergei Bobrovsky succession plan.
Honestly, most were claiming it was a terrible idea. The Panthers are trying to get back to Stanley Cup contention. They just added Brady Tkachuk to the mix. Yet, they were willing to give up Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist for the thought of Markstrom? We get that there’s familiarity for Markstrom in Florida, but he was drafted and developed there. Now, he’s near the end of his career.
And yet, at least for one night, the move worked out perfectly. Markstrom not only pitched a shutout in his first game with the Panthers, but he shut out the Carolina Hurricanes on the night they raised the banner, and he did it through overtime. Sixty-five minutes of perfection.
Of course Jacob Markstrom would dominate in his first game with a new team
New Jersey Devils fans can only sit back and laugh when thinking about it. The Devils are sitting here with huge question marks in net while the Panthers take their scraps and turn it into greatness.
We get that this is only one night, but seeing Markstrom play so well while the Devils are hoping to find lightning in a bottle is not the position we expected to be in. Yet, it’s the position we find ourselves.
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