Martin Brodeur said the New Jersey Devils reached the point where they had to move for an elite goaltender, and Connor Hellebuyck answered with a 5-1 win at the Dallas Stars in his first victory with New Jersey. Hellebuyck made 17 saves Tuesday, four days after the Devils acquired him from the Winnipeg Jets.
The timing is why the move is drawing so much attention now. Brodeur said the Devils' core is already in or near its prime, and he framed the trade as a way to widen the team's window of winning rather than wait for a later reset. Hellebuyck, 33, had not played an NHL game since April 13 before the start in Dallas, and the performance gave the Devils an immediate payoff for a deal that cost them Dawson Mercer, Nick Bjugstad, Nico Daws, the rights to Alexander Command, a second-round pick in the 2029 NHL Draft and a seventh-round selection in the 2027 NHL Draft.
Brodeur's view carries weight because he spent 1,259 of his 1,266 NHL games with New Jersey and won the Vezina Trophy four times before going into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018. He said the Devils' group is there now, pointing to Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt and Timo Meier as players in their late 20s, with Hughes a little younger. In his view, this was the moment for Sunny Mehta to pull off a deal that could help the club take its next step.
The friction is easy to see: the Devils already have Jake Allen, yet Brodeur still described adding Hellebuyck as necessary. He called that kind of tandem a luxury, but he also made clear he was not talking about splitting hairs between two goalies for the sake of it. Hellebuyck has started at least 50 games in nine of the past 10 seasons and has 616 starts in 626 NHL games, which points to a goalie built to carry a heavy load. Allen gives New Jersey another option, but Hellebuyck's track record suggests the job is still his to own.
What Brodeur did not spell out is how the Devils will divide starts going forward. That is the next question now that the trade has already produced a win and the team has invested heavily in a goalie it believes can push a prime-age roster deeper into contention.
