Two Wins, Two One-Goal Games, One Very Familiar Problem
The final margins tell you everything the scoresheet tries to hide. New Jersey opened their 2026–27 season with a 2–1 win over the Islanders and followed it with a 3–2 decision against the Rangers. Perfect record. Both games decided by a single goal. If you watched last season closely, you've seen this movie before — and you know how it ends.
Last season's Devils finished 44–40, a record that looked respectable until you held it against what their goal differential actually deserved. They were outscored on the season, and their pythagorean expectation trailed their actual winning percentage by 6.8 points — meaning New Jersey won roughly seven more games than a team with their run differential should have. That gap doesn't come from dominance. It comes from execution in tight moments, from goaltending holding on by fingernails, from the kind of variance that the hockey gods eventually reclaim. The Devils went 44–40 not because they were a 44-win team, but because they were exceptional at surviving one-goal games. That is not a sustainable business model.
What makes the early 2026–27 results genuinely concerning rather than merely inconvenient is the structural context underneath them. Jacob Markstrom — the veteran anchor who held the crease through those tight finishes — is gone, traded to Florida in June. Sunny Mehta said publicly on September 18 that he's comfortable with the goaltending situation. Comfort is not a save percentage. The question isn't whether Mehta believes in his plan; it's whether the plan can survive the same close-game gauntlet that exposed the roster's ceiling last year.
The blue line is thinner, too. Simon Nemec, who posted a plus-6 rating and 22 points in just 37 games last season — the best plus-minus among the team's top-10 scorers — was traded to Calgary in June. Luke Hughes remains a genuine asset at 24 points and leads all Devils defenders in ice time, but his minus-9 rating last season reflects a team that was consistently outplayed at even strength and rescued by circumstance. Losing Nemec's efficiency and adding no established defensive replacement is a compounding liability for a team that cannot afford to keep winning 2–1.
The offensive core is real. Hischier and Bratt each produced 36 points last season, and Jack Hughes posted 32 in just 31 games before his season was cut short. Dawson Mercer's 14 goals and plus-8 rating made him the team's most reliable two-way forward. Anthony Mantha's arrival adds a proven goal-scorer, and Luke Evangelista's five-year extension signals that Mehta is betting on the forward group to carry more weight. My read is that the offense can sustain the Devils through stretches — but sustained offense without a goal-differential cushion just means more 3–2 games, not fewer.
Two wins is two wins. But the number that actually matters isn't on the scoreboard yet. It's the gap between goals scored and goals allowed, accumulated over 82 games, that will determine whether this team is genuinely better or just running the same variance play that inflated last year's record. The Devils have built a more interesting roster than they had twelve months ago. They have not yet built a team that can afford to keep winning by one.