Goaltending was once the position that defined the New Jersey Devils as a franchise. For roughly the past decade now, the position has been a revolving door of inconsistency for a team that was spoiled by having the great Martin Brodeur between the pipes. General Manager Sunny Mehta hasn’t made any rash decisions to try and fix the issues since taking over in his role this past summer, but that doesn’t mean he’s been idle either. He moved on from an underachieving Jacob Markstrom in favor of giving
Jake Allen more starts and allowing Nico Daws to have a true path to be an NHL net minder. He also brought in veteran David Rittich to provide depth and claimed Remi Poirier off of waivers from Dallas when he became available.
All of this of course is leading us to having a tough conversation about Nico Daws.
Now 25 years old (and turning 26 before the end of the calendar year), Daws isn’t really a prospect any longer. At the same time, as alluded to above, he’s not really an established NHLer either. Across five NHL seasons, Daws has only appeared in 58 games, and 46 of those came in his first two seasons in the league. He has only started 10 games over the past three seasons; some of the blame there, however, may lie with the last regime, as they wanted to run with two veteran goalies. At the same time though Daws did not do much of anything to push either of the two incumbents out or for a different team to pick him up off of waivers. One would have to think that if Daws had at least shown enough potential to be an NHL asset, some team would have taken a chance on him at least one of the times that he was on waivers.
Daws hasn’t inspired much confidence to start off his 2026-27. While Mehta has implied that Daws could seize the starting role, he’s been too inconsistent to do so and Jake Allen has started six of the Devils’ first nine games as a result. Now, I’m not saying Allen has been great with his .883 save percentage, but Daws has somehow been worse with only an .857. One good game doesn’t offset the two poorer outings, especially when you look at the number of shots on goal versus the number of them that went in. While the team left Daws out to dry in terms of goals in his first game, he still let in some softies that can’t get past a good tender. His next outing saw him face just 19 shots, but only 16 of them would get stopped. Yes, the offense was not good again in that game, but NHL teams don’t win games when three goals go in on 19 shots either.
For Daws, this isn’t anything new; he’s been inconsistent his entire time in the NHL, and even at the AHL level to the point where the Devils claimed another goalie who has had consistent stats at least at the AHL level. Yet with Remi Poirier seemingly waiting in the wings, the Devils have continued to roll Allen/Daws. At what point does the team pull the plug on the Daws experiment? When do they decide that enough inconsistency is enough and give a shot to Poirier or even Rittich?
The Devils are a team that are supposed to be at the very least competing, and while you can win with an average goalie in today’s NHL, you cannot win with a below average one. I think we’re at, or at least very, very quickly approaching the point where we can label Daws as “below average” at the NHL level. He hasn’t shown consistency, he hasn’t shown anything to make himself stand out, and aside from a few glimmers of hope in his first couple of seasons, he hasn’t strung together any amount of success that would indicate an NHL future. Maybe you argue 58 games isn’t a large enough sample size for a goalie to see if they can amount to anything. I would counter that by saying that if he had shown himself to be skilled enough, he would have pushed Allen or Jacob Markstrom out; and no, Markstrom being traded this past summer was not because they had Daws.
If the Devils had no other options in the system at this time, I wouldn’t be pushing for the Devils to end the Daws experiment. But with Poirier waiting for an opportunity and Rittich putting up strong AHL numbers, why keep rolling out Daws? He’s not going to magically transform into a consistent NHL starter, and he seemingly isn’t any better than he was in his prior stints, even with a new goaltending coach. Jake Allen isn’t a long-term answer, but at least when he starts, there’s a feeling he can keep the Devils above water. I don’t get that same feeling with Daws and again, with how inconsistent he’s been, why not try someone else who maybe can be an answer for a team that is craving playoff success? Those answers lie somewhere beyond this article, but hopefully something is solved soon that leads to sustained success for our New Jersey Devils.
What are your thoughts on the Devils/Nico Daws situation; do you think it’s time to pull the plug on the experiment? Are you willing to give him a few more games after his most recent performance? Would you rather see the Devils team Remi Poirier or David Rittich with Jake Allen? Does your concern lie more with the personnel around the goalies rather than the goalies themselves? Leave any and all comments down below and thanks as always for reading!
