Devils revamp Goalie room- For now.

    The Achilles heel for the disappointing season of the New Jersey Devils has been their goaltending and while those problems haven't been solved immediately or even at all, at least the team is trying something.

The second of the two trades for netminders saw the Devils send Vitek Vanecek and their 2024 seventh-round draft pick to the San Jose Sharks for Kaapo Kahkonen.

The twenty-seven-old Kahkonen has also had his problems this season with a GAA of 3.81 and a save percentage of .895 for the Sharks.

Now keep in mind that the Sharks are terrible and even worse defensively, so Kahkonen faced a lot of rubber every night with very little defensive help available to him so that has a huge chunk of the blame for the one goal per game increase in GAA since Kahkonen left Minnesota three years ago.

I suppose the numbers could be excused by the Sharks' ineptitude and Kahkonen will be a free agent at the end of the year, so look at it as a month-long get-to-know-you session for the cost of a seventh-round pick.

Vitek Vanecek was in the middle of a dreadful season, which was unfair to a degree as the team and fans may have expected too much after a solid 2022-23 season.

Vanecek's 23-24 season doesn't look much different from Kahkonen's (3.18 GAA, .890 save percentage) but Vanecek is a year older, the Devils would have been on the hook for another year of Vanecek's contract, and those stats on a team better than San Jose show the Devils aren't giving up much for their look-see at Kahkoken.

While obtaining Kaapo Kahkoken doesn't solve the problem, his statistics in Minnesota were strong, and perhaps at 27 with a more talented team around him, perhaps there is a little bit of hope for the Devils here.

And if not, they moved a contract away by trading Vitek Vanecek.

The trade that seems to make little sense to me (at the cost) is the trade with Montreal for veteran Jake Allen.

Allen is under contract for next season, cost a third-rounder in 2025 that has the stipulation that IF Allen plays forty or more games next season AND the team that has Allen (covering Montreal in the event of a trade) next season makes the playoffs, the third-rounder becomes a second-rounder.

Montreal will pay half of his salary, so that's something but this seems like a lot for a thirty-three-year-old player with a 3.65 GAA and a .892 save percentage (numbers very similar to Vanecek, who I couldn't wait to get rid of).

I suppose it's possible the Devils could try to land a better goalie in the off-season and move Allen, or even keep Allen as a number two option for a while to see how things progress next season but I'm not excited for the time being.

New Jersey finished the day with the trade of defenseman Colin Miller to Winnipeg for a fourth-round pick in 2026.

The thirty-one yeat old Miller has four goals and four assists this season for New Jersey as a steadying influence defensively and is the type of player that always seems to be coveted by playoff contenders.

2026 is a while away but a very fair return.

I'd say this was a pretty average day for Tom Fitzgerald.

I like the Kaapo Kahkoken trade and the Miller trade was a fair return.

I'm not so crazy about the Jake Allen trade and while the Tyler Toffoli trade wasn't a poor deal, I think the Devils might have done a little better had they drained the deadline a bit.

Overall, going by the letter grade system, I'll say C for now with the potential for a higher grade with good play from either new goalie.

Devils trade Blackwood to San Jose

    With the NHL draft one day away and the New Jersey Devils still lacking a first-round pick, the Devils still found a way to make some news with two minor trades.

The bigger of the two saw the one-time Devils goaltender of the future end his future with the Devils as Mackenzie Blackwood was traded to the San Jose Sharks for a sixth-round pick in the upcoming draft.

New Jersey used their second-round draft pick in 2015 (forty-second overall) on Blackwood, who was the second goaltender drafted and the first North American netminder selected.

Blackwood played in twenty-two games for the Devils last season, finishing 10-6-2 with a GAA of 3.20 and a save percentage of .893.

This past season was the third season in a row that Blackwood allowed over three goals a game as Blackwood authored a disappointing end to a tenure that started well in New Jersey.

Blackwood's first two seasons were strong ones for a bad team with an even worse defense in front of him, as he won thirty-two games over those seasons, finishing at .500 in his rookie year and 22-14-8 in the second season, finishing both years with a GAA under three and save percentages of over ninety-one percent.

But Blackwood never seemed to recover following the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown as his game fell into a decline that he was unable to reverse.

Blackwood suffered from illness, injury, and battles over the Covid-19 vaccine as Blackwood first refused to take the vaccine, and after taking it, playing even worse.

Blackwood was a restricted free agent and when you consider that the Devils were unlikely to make a qualifying offer of over four million dollars for a third goaltender that has struggled for years, Tom Fitzgerald did well in getting a sixth-rounder, which isn't anything to leap into the air about but it is literally better than nothing.

New Jersey also made a minor trade with the Boston Bruins as the Devils added forward Shane Bowers from Boston for defenseman Reilly Walsh.

The best part of this trade is the two teams swapped two players from the 2017 draft and the two have each played one game in the NHL.

Bowers was the first-round pick of Ottawa in 2017 and played his only NHL game for Colorado last season.

Bowers spent the rest of the season playing in the American Hockey League for fifty-seven games split between Colorado and Providence, where he combined for eight goals and seventeen assists between the two teams.

Walsh was taken by New Jersey in the third round in 2017, and played his lone game for New Jersey in 2020-21, finishing with an assist.

Walsh played last season for the Utica Comets in the AHL, finishing with nine goals and thirty-two assists in seventy-one games.

Both players are likely to play for their teams' respective AHL affiliates with a possible emergency callup.