New Jersey Devils: When Was The Last Time Mackenzie Blackwood Was Healthy?

The New Jersey Devils announced on Tuesday that they were shutting down starting goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood. He’s been dealing with a heel injury this entire season. This likely would have happened sooner, but the Devils also lost their other starting goalie Jonathan Bernier to a hip injury. The Devils are now down their two starters, and the plan right now is to go with Jon Gillies and Akira Schmid.

It’s clear the Devils netminder has been injured all season. Whether that injury is the sole reason for his issues in net isn’t clear yet, but we likely won’t know that until next season. The Devils shut down Blackwood, but the team hasn’t announced for how long he could be out of the lineup. It has to be on the table that he could be shut down for the season as the Devils are out of the playoff race entirely.

When looking at his numbers, Blackwood has been bad for most of this season. His last game was against the Arizona Coyotes. While a prominent member of the Devils media group asked me to re-evaluate my position on his performance in that game, he definitely wasn’t “good”. Not by a long shot. It’s hard to blame him for every goal, especially with how the defense plays without Dougie Hamilton in the lineup, but the Devils need him to make a big save, and he’s struggled to make that happen on a consistent basis.

Let’s act as if Blackwood has been hurt all season. His numbers would suggest that. Where the injuries really hurt goalies is making the huge saves. 11 goalies have allowed 30 high-danger goals this season according to Natural Stat Trick. Nobody has done it in fewer minutes as Mackenzie Blackwood. Blackwood has allowed 36 high-danger goals in 1,044 minutes. The only player who’s allowed more at 5v5, Robin Lehner, allowed 40 in 1,439 minutes. Blackwood is not making the big save when the Devils need him to make it. This isn’t to say he hasn’t made some highlight saves. He absolutely has, but the Devils need him to make hard saves consistently instead of impossible saves sometimes.

It’s well-established Blackwood hasn’t been healthy for one minute of hockey this season. Was he healthy at all last season? Let’s look at the facts.

Blackwood started the season on absolute fire. He had a .948 save percentage in his first three games of the season. Then, he was one of the first NHL players to catch COVID-19 during the season. He told us that he had long-term COVID symptoms at the end of the season. That was months later. His numbers progressively got worse last season, and he was clearly impacted by a virus that takes away your lung capacity and fatigues you.

So, we’ve established that Blackwood has been injured or sick for the better part of two seasons now. He hasn’t been able to prove the doubters wrong because his body is failing him. Here’s the thing, Blackwood just turned 25 years old in December. He still has plenty of time to prove himself. The Devils have him signed to one more year at a very reasonable rate ($2.8 million), and then he’ll become a restricted free agent. The Devils don’t have to worry about assessing his value at this point. They just need him to get healthy because he really has one more season to prove he’s “the guy” before the Devils have to come up with a backup plan.