Well, the football team from Philadelphia won the big football game on Sunday. Gritty made jokes about the score while N.J. Devil joked about a famous celebrity couple in attendance. Late in the night, rookie Matvei Mitchkov was probably confused why fans were fliiping cars in the “City of Brotherly Love”. Now that the NFL season is over its officially 4 Nations Face-Off time. Some NHL teams might be more excited for the coulda-shoulda-woulda been All-Star break than others.
One of those teams is the New Jersey Devils. They currently sit third in the Metropolitan Division and ended their first half on a high note by shutting out the Montreal Canadiens 4-0 on Saturday. Still the Devils are imping into this break, literally and figuratively, because of an unfortunate streak of injuries to a star forward, star defenseman and star goalie.
First came an injury to goaltender Jacob Markstrom. Lack of stability in net was the main reason the Devils missed out on last year’s playoffs in part due to injuries and Vitek Vanecek not replicating his 2022-2023 form. Markstrom was acquired in the offseason from the Calgary Flames and has been exactly as advertised, even if he has the occasional bad night and let’s in the bad goal.
Markstrom even poked fun at these by playing himself in the NHL’s recent commercial about “tipping”
Markstrom suffered an MCL sprain during the Devils 5-1 win over the Boston Bruins on January 22nd that prevented him from finishing the game. He was given a timeline of being out for four to six weeks, which would put him roughly on track to come back shortly after the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Markstrom was slated to be on Team Sweden for the tournament, but has since been replaced by Samuel Ersson of the Philadelphia Flyers. Four weeks of recovery would have Markstrom ready for the Devils first game back from the break against the Dallas Stars on February 22nd while six weeks would put him at the Devils February 26th away matchup against the Colorado Avalanche.
Since Markstrom’s injury the Devils have played a goalie tandem of Jake Allen and Nico Daws (Isaac Poulter was also called up but has seen no game action). Including the Boston game the Devils are 5-3-0 in Markstrom’s absence.
Allen, who was acquired at last year’s deadline, has become the de-facto No. 1 and personally sports a 3-3 record since then (not including his relief appearance against Boston). Two of those three wins were shut outs, giving Allen four on the season.
The most recent unfortunate injury for the Devils was defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler
He’s been the team’s best defenseman, as well as one of the NHL’s best defensive defenseman, but was injured in the team’s February 8th win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was announced Monday Siegenthaler will be out a “few weeks” with no clearer time table given.
Almost, if not, as equally important to the team as Markstrom’s injury was that to captain Nico Hischier who was injured in the teams January 25th matchup against the Canadiens with an undisclosed, although speculated to be an upper body rib, injury. Hischier has since landed on IR, although head coach Sheldon Keefe said Hischier has resumed skating is expected, by him at least, to be ready once the 4 Nations break ends. In addition to subpar goaltending last season lengthy injuries to players like Hischier were cited as main reason for New Jersey’s “off year” last year.
What’s ironic is that the Devils find themselves in the opposite situation they found themselves in going into the Christmas holiday break. The Devils were seemingly unstoppable going 7-2-1 into that break. Since then the team is 8-9-3 entering this break. All the Devils and Devils fans know is this break came at the perfect time and couldn't come soon enough.