The New Jersey Devils headed to Sunrise, Florida on Thursday to face the Florida Panthers in the penultimate game of their road trip. Despite some stellar attempts with the extra attacker on, Panthers netminder Sergei Bobrovsky stood tall as he blanked the Devils, 1-0 — their first time being shutout this season.
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Struggling to Score First on the Road
This season, the Devils have scored the first goal of the game exactly half of the time (10/20), which in of itself is an improvement from the last two seasons (65/164 — 39.6%).
But when looking deeper, they’ve scored first in just 4/12 road games (33.3%), and 6/8 home games (75%). Once again tonight, they found themselves behind the eight ball on the road as a quick shot by Sam Reinhart gave the Panthers an early 1-0 lead. That was all they needed.
When scoring first, the Devils are 9-0-1. When giving up the first goal, they’re now 4-6-0. While some may point to Reinhart’s world-class shot and say the Devils shouldn’t be faulted on this occasion, the Devils still got out chanced 7-4 in the first, so a 1-0 deficit didn’t seem too unfair. They’ll need to find ways to get off to better starts on the road.
Death, Taxes & Jake Allen Playing Well
According to team reporter Sam Kasan, goaltender Jacob Markstrom missed the last two practices as the team had to “monitor something that happened late in 3rd v. TBL”.
Combine that with Markstrom’s very poor 3.83 goals against average (GAA) and .864 save percentage (SV%), and it seems pretty clear that Jake Allen should — at least temporarily — assume the bulk of the starts.
Tonight, Allen did even more to prove that as he stopped 23 of 24 (.958%) for +1.39 goals saved above expected, per Moneypuck. Time after time again, Allen continues to come up rock solid for the Devils. He already showed that he can handle a larger load when Markstrom went down earlier in the season.
Lack of Finishing
After being one of the worst finishing teams in the league last season, the Devils got off to a fast start in 2025-26, scoring seven 5v5 goals above expected in their first nine games. Since then, though, they’ve scored 7.23 goals below expected, including minus-1.42 tonight. (via Natural Stat Trick)
With all the injuries, the Devils are going to need average-to-above average finishing to get by; coming into the night, their 2.41 expected goals per 60 minutes ranked just 23rd in the NHL.
This certainly doesn’t mean that the Devils are lacking talent…until they’re at least close to full strength, you shouldn’t put too much stock into these numbers. But in the meantime, points will matter more than the process — in Jack Hughes’ absence, they’ll need play .500 hockey or better to stay afloat.
Moving Forward
The Devils — now 13-6-1 — will finish their road trip on Saturday against the Philadelphia Flyers (7:00 PM EST).
