- 1 New Jersey Devils vs St. Louis Blues: Hellebuyck’s first home stretch against a Blues team missing its blue line
- 2 New Jersey Devils: 10-1-0 when both Hughes brothers score
- 3 St. Louis Blues: 46 shots and no goals against Montreal, five goals on 15 shots in Detroit
- 4 Free NHL Prediction: New Jersey Devils vs St. Louis Blues
- 5 About our free predictions
- 6 No commitment from us
- 7 Information changes
- 8 Your responsibility
- 9 Responsible gambling
- 10 Legal age
- 11 About visuals
New Jersey Devils vs St. Louis Blues: Hellebuyck’s first home stretch against a Blues team missing its blue line 
Before 23 October, New Jersey’s goaltenders had combined for a .880 save percentage, 23rd of 32 teams in the NHL. That day the Devils sent Dawson Mercer, Nico Daws, prospect Alexander Command, two draft picks and the injured Nick Bjugstad to Winnipeg for Connor Hellebuyck. He has started twice since and won twice: 17 saves in a 5-1 win at Dallas, then 19 saves in a 5-2 win at Vegas on 30 October.
The Devils host St. Louis at Prudential Center on Thursday 5 November, puck drop 7pm ET. New Jersey came off its three-game Western trip at 9-5-0, with five wins from its last six games. The only loss in that run was a 5-2 defeat in Colorado on 29 October, the one game of the trip Hellebuyck didn’t start.
St. Louis is 7-6-1 and plays this game on the third stop of a four-game road trip. The trip opened on 31 October in Detroit, where the Blues trailed 4-2 early in the third period and won 5-4. It continues at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday before Newark, then finishes in Nashville on Saturday afternoon.
The Blues are short on defense. Torey Krug is on season-ending long-term injured reserve with an ankle injury, Logan Mailloux is out with a hand injury into late November, Tyler Tucker had arthroscopic knee surgery in late September and Colton Parayko was listed out until at least 3 November with an upper-body injury. Philip Broberg played 27:09 in Detroit, more than any skater on either team.
Both teams play on Tuesday before this one, the Devils at home to Edmonton and the Blues against the Rangers, so the form lines below run up to the weekend. We don’t expect those results to change the shape of this game: one team has just found an elite goaltender, the other is dressing a patched-up defense four games into a road swing.
New Jersey Devils: 10-1-0 when both Hughes brothers score 
Jack and Luke Hughes both scored in Vegas, the second time they’d done it that week. It was the 11th game since Luke reached the NHL in 2022-23 in which both brothers found the net, and New Jersey has won ten of those eleven. Luke opened the scoring 5:38 into the first period, Jack restored the lead early in the second and added an empty-netter late.
Arseny Gritsyuk scored the other two in Vegas, including the 4-2 goal with 1:44 left in the second period. He already had four goals by 21 October, when New Jersey beat Colorado 4-3 at home, and that stretch included a 7-1 win over the Rangers. The Devils scored 18 goals across those four games.
The Colorado rematch on 29 October showed the other side. The Avalanche outshot New Jersey 45-22 in Denver and won 5-2, with Connor Brown scoring both Devils goals, one of them shorthanded. The Devils won 46.3% of the faceoffs that night, and Jake Allen was in net.
That game is the strongest argument for Hellebuyck’s value. He’s a three-time Vezina Trophy winner and the 2024-25 Hart Trophy winner, carries a career .916 save percentage among U.S.-born goalies with 300 or more starts, and has five seasons left at an $8.5 million cap hit. His win in Vegas moved him past Craig Anderson into fifth place for road wins by a U.S.-born goaltender.
New Jersey went 3-3-0 on the road through 30 October, which leaves the Devils 6-2-0 at Prudential Center. Sheldon Keefe spoke after the Vegas game about the team’s growing confidence in its own ability, and the win dropped Vegas to 1-3-1 in its last five games.
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St. Louis Blues: 46 shots and no goals against Montreal, five goals on 15 shots in Detroit 
St. Louis put 46 shots on Montreal’s net in a home loss last week and didn’t score once. Four nights later in Detroit, the Blues scored five times on 15 shots against John Gibson, who didn’t make his first save until 9:05 of the second period. Neither number tells the whole story, but together they describe a team whose results have depended heavily on the goalie at the other end.
The comeback in Detroit came in 4:38 of the third period. Pavel Buchnevich made it 4-3 at 8:37 off a Jake Neighbours pass, Justin Barron tied it at 12:57 and Aleksanteri Kaskimaki tipped in an Alexey Toropchenko feed at 13:15 for his first NHL goal, in his 11th game. Detroit had outshot St. Louis 8-1 in the first period.
Jimmy Snuggerud scored on a rebound in the last minute of the second period and finished with a goal and an assist. Dalibor Dvorsky opened the scoring at 2:29. Robert Thomas added an assist and won 14 of 21 faceoffs, and he and Broberg each had three points in a 4-1 win over Boston earlier in the week.
Joel Hofer made 24 saves on 28 shots in Detroit, and one of the four goals came from his own misplay behind the net, which left J.T. Compher an empty net to tie the game at 1-1. With Krug, Mailloux, Tucker and Parayko all out, plus Dillon Dube (neck, at least eight weeks) and Ross Johnston (lower body) on injured reserve, the Blues have little depth to protect him.
The schedule adds to it. This is the Blues’ third road game in six days, after Detroit on Saturday and the Rangers on Tuesday, with a Saturday matinee in Nashville still to come. St. Louis is 7-6-1, and no part of its record so far suggests a team built to win a low-shot game in a hostile building against a Vezina-level goaltender.
Probable lineup New Jersey Devils: Not announced at time of publication (Connor Hellebuyck expected in goal after starting two of the last three games)
Probable lineup St. Louis Blues: Not announced at time of publication (Joel Hofer started the road-trip opener in Detroit)
Free NHL Prediction: New Jersey Devils vs St. Louis Blues
Our prediction: New Jersey Devils to win (moneyline)
We’re backing the Devils in regulation or beyond. New Jersey is 6-2-0 at home, has won five of its last six and has its best goaltender in years behind a group that scored five goals in each of his first two starts. St. Louis needed a two-goal third-period rally against a goalie who’d made ten saves to beat Detroit, and it couldn’t score on 46 shots against Montreal.
The argument against us is that the Blues have Thomas, Snuggerud and Buchnevich all producing, and that New Jersey’s 45-22 shot deficit in Colorado shows how quickly the Devils can be pinned in their own end. We accept that. But Colorado is a deeper team than this version of St. Louis, which is without four regular defensemen and on its third road game in six days.
Moneyline prices hadn’t been posted at the time of writing. We’d take the Devils at 1.45 or bigger; if the price opens shorter than that, New Jersey to win by two or more goals is the alternative we’d look at, given both of Hellebuyck’s wins in a Devils jersey came by three goals or more.
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