After bouncing back from an injury, Jacob Markstrom ended his first season with the New Jersey Devils on a high note with a series of stellar playoff performances. That form, however, has not carried over to start the 2025-26 season.
Markstrom, 35, has not necessarily been bad, but we can't say he's been great, or even good, either. Through two games, the 6-foot-6 netminder has a 4.04 GAA and a .837 save percentage. That can quickly change with a few good performances, especially this early in the season, but there is some cause for concern.
Markstrom isn't getting younger at 35 years old, and he'll turn 36 on Jan. 31. There's been some talk about a potential contract extension with the Devils, but this slow start to the season should give Tom Fitzgerald and Co. something to chew on and put that on pause until later in the year.
The Swede had already gone three straight seasons with a save percentage of .905 or lower, and it might just be possible that Markstrom's best days in net are behind him. It would be foolish to overreact after just two games, but he did get torched for five goals in the season opener against Carolina, not including a number of occasions on which the Hurricanes hit posts.
Jacob Markstrom's slow start shouldn't be concerning... yet
Markstrom's workload was nearly halved on Saturday night, as the Devils limited Tampa Bay to only 20 shots on goal compared to Carolina's 32 a few days prior. Still, he was beaten three times and didn't come up with those highlight-reel saves we've seen in the past.
According to Moneypuck, Markstrom has allowed 2.3 goals over expected, which ranks seventh-worst in the NHL, ahead of only Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill, Andrei Vasilevskiy, John Gibson, Dustin Wolf, and Linus Ullmark. The good news is that he's in good company there, and the bad news is that he's the oldest of the bunch.
There's still plenty of time for the veteran goalie to turn things around, fortunately, and the Devils are going to need him to - potentially even more so than last year.