The New Jersey Devils will see another one of their former goaltenders when they play the Colorado Avalanche later in the season. After being shut on Sunday night by Scott Wedgewood, the Devils will see Mackenzie Blackwood on February 26, 2025. Blackwood was just traded to the Colorado Avalanche on Monday from the San Jose Sharks.
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Blackwood, who the Devils drafted in the second round (42nd overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft, looked to be the future goalie for New Jersey. The potential and ability was there. However, the problem was Blackwood was growing with a young team in New Jersey. His best season came in the 2019-20 COVID-shortened season, where he had a 22-14-8 record with a 2.77 GAA and .915 save percentage. He had a 2.61 GAA and a .918 save percentage the year prior. However, those numbers were in just 10 starts. In the 2019-20 season, he played 47 games and started 43.
Blackwood had a rocky road with the New Jersey Devils, especially about getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Injuries caught up with Blackwood in New Jersey. General Manager Tom Fitzgerald was not sure if he could be the guy to man the pipes moving forward.
Blackwood’s numbers started to dip towards the tail end of his time with the Devils. Therefore, Fitzgerald traded him to the San Jose Sharks on June 27, 2023, for a sixth-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft. After the trade, Blackwood signed a two-year $4.7 million contract on July 1, 2023. Blackwood started to get his rhythm in San Jose, but the Sharks were a young and upcoming team going through a rebuild.
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Like John Gibson, Mackenzie Blackwood saw a lot of shots playing on a bad team. Therefore, his numbers looked better than they were. Blackwood stopped 50 or more shots twice this season for the Sharks. And some inside the Sharks organization believed he could be an elite-level goalie in the NHL. Blackwood had a 3.00 GAA this season with San Jose and a .911 save percentage. But his biggest knock was that he was doing this on a bad team, so let’s see what he could do on a good team.
The hockey world will find out how good he is on a good team as the Sharks ship him to the Avalanche. It had long been rumored that the former Devils goaltender was someone Colorado coveted. And boy did they pay the price for him. Scott Wedgewood and Blackwood, teammates during the 2019-20 season, are reunited in Colorado. They are also joined by former teammate Miles Wood, who was already there.
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It will be interesting to see how he performs with higher expectations. Not only are the expectations high for him but for the Avalanche. The Colorado Avalanche revamped their entire goaltending situation in just a few months. They traded for not one but two former New Jersey Devils goalies in Blackwood and Wedgewood.
Are they good enough to get the Avalanche to a Stanley Cup? We will find out. This duo might be good enough for the playoffs, but it is another to win. Even though Avalanche GM told reporters after the trade he did not trade for the pending UFA goalie for four months, results will play a role if he gets an extension for the team.
For now, Blackwood has an opportunity to silence his biggest critics and prove he get it done for a good team on a big stage.
