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 deals- Add Vanecek, Haula

    The first day of NHL free agency arrived and left with the New Jersey Devils swinging big for the top player available for the second year in a row but this time settling for a consolation prize.

I'll be writing about that signing later but for now I'll finally get around to discussing the Devils draft day trade and their free agency day swap with the Boston Bruins.

On the second day of the NHL draft last week, New Jersey hopes to have solved at least some of their problems in net with the acquisition of Vitek Vanecek from fellow division member Washington.

The teams flipped second-round picks and New Jersey sent Washington a third-rounder for the signing rights to Vanecek, who is a restricted free agent.

The Devils had massive problems in goal last season with Mackenzie Blackwood looking like he had never played before, Jonathan Bernier played in only ten less than effective games, and a parade of players either too young, too old, or vagabond types that were incapable of patching the hole even temporarily.

The 26-year-old Vanecek won twenty games for Washington last season with a 2.67 GAA, a .908 save percentage, and four shutouts in his second season with the Capitals, sharing the position with 

Vanecek is hoped to team with a revitalized Blackwood as the Devils goaltending tandem as no one knows what they would receive if anything out of Bernier this season. 

Is Vanecek the long-term answer? I doubt it but he seems at least capable of producing similar statistics to his two seasons in Washington and I think the Devils would be pleased with those results.

On the first day of free agency, New Jersey traded former 2015 first-round pick Pavel Zacha to Boston for veteran left wing Erik Haula in a deal that spelled the end of high hopes for Zacha, who did a little of everything as a forward but not enough of anything to be special.

Zacha scored 15 goals with 21 assists last season but was an awful minus twenty-one and scored two fewer goals than in 2020-21 in twenty more games played.

The time may have come to cut Zacha loose and see if he needed a change of scenery.

As for Erik Haula, he's 31 and has one year remaining on his contract, which is worth 2.3 million to Haula and is coming off his second-best season in his career with 18 goals and 26 assists in his first and only season in Boston.

I wonder about older players that exceed their normal statistics playing with a strong team and then move to a lesser one and that's my concern on Haula.

Haula should help the third line a bit but while I understand moving Pavel Zacha might be best for both parties, I'm not sure that I'm expecting Erik Haula for perhaps only one season to be worth Zacha's chances of putting it all together.

As the weekend approaches, I hope to have a look at the Devils free agent signees and the one that got away.