Three games in to 2025-26 and there is a lot going right for the New Jersey Devils. They’re 2-1-0 and despite some imperfections in their games, there’s a good number of positives to highlight. Timo Meier has chipped in a couple early goals. Jesper Bratt has picked up roughly from where he left off last season. The defense as a whole has looked pretty good. Newcomers Connor Brown and Arseny Gritsyuk have chipped in and helped produce offense. There’s definitely a few other performances and highlights
that you could point out, but today we’re here to talk about a prominent lowlight instead: injuries.
Injuries are a part of the game, we all know that. Missing Johnny Kovacevic was known, since he was projected to miss this much time when his injury occurred during the playoffs. However the Devils have already lost a number of other players. Throughout summer training and the preseason, Stefan Noesen and Seamus Casey both suffered injuries, as did depth forward Marc McLaughlin. With a bit less to work with before even playing a game, the Devils still entered the season with a competitive roster that looked mostly like what was predicted prior to the season starting. One of the articles that I wrote late in the summer was how the Devils would need to play well in October to have a successful season. There’s still a lot of difficult October games to come, and the first three games have increased the difficulty.
Game one saw Evgenii Dadonov go down with what would later be diagnosed as a fractured hand. This led to Ondrej Palat being moved back up to the top line reuniting Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt with Tom Fitzgerald’s favorite boat anchor. Zack MacEwen, acquired during the preseason for Kurtis MacDermid, entered the lineup after Dadonov was hurt, and against Tampa Bay would get injured himself. The upper body injury for him means we won’t be seeing him anytime soon according to Sheldon Keefe. Jake Allen then decided to give us a scare in game three when he didn’t return for the third period against Columbus. The team would announce that he was just cramping, but as Jacob Markstrom came in to relieve him, he would suffer an injury in the final minute that now has him slated to miss a couple of weeks.
While the Jake Allen news is a good sign (he looked fantastic in the two periods he played in Columbus) the Devils are also sadly averaging one injury per game right now. Obviously that pace isn’t going to continue, but missing a goalie, a Top 6 forward and a grit guy (who actually looked decent in his team debut) is going to affect the team’s performance. Markstrom was not good in his first two games, but Nico Daws has had some struggles in his time with Utica. The team can ride Allen when he’s not cramping, but this team right now is one potential goaltending injury away from being in the 2023-24 boat again. Dadonov and MacEwen going down is a bit less impactful, but if another forward or two suffers an injury prior to Noesen being ready to return, the Devils might have to be calling up guys who are not yet NHL ready, and there’s the possibility they drop a few key October games as a result.
Let’s not end on a down note though. Like I said, the injuries can’t keep up at this pace, and right now the team is playing well, even with the forwards they’re missing. More encouraging still is the performance they put in against Columbus (minus the final 30 seconds or so) along with Jake Allen rocking a .958 save percentage while stopping 23 of 24 shots though two periods. If the Devils can keep playing the way they are and Allen drinks a ton of extra water to keep from cramping, there’s a great chance they still come out of October with a good record and in good position in the Metropolitan Division.
Now I’d like to hear your thoughts on the injuries and the impact they may have on the remainder of October. Are you worried how about how many players have gone down? Are you more concerned about it affecting the team’s performance and record? Can the Devils continue to play well even if another guy or two goes down? Do you think the team should be placing Jake Allen in bubble wrap between games? Leave any and all comments below and thanks as always for reading!
