New Jersey Devils: What Makes Nico Hischier’s Career A Success
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils were pleasantly surprised with how good Nico Hischier was in his first season. With a fast start, how good must he become to be considered a success?
Success is sports is a funny thing. It’s basically a math equation. You start with a team’s expectation, you subtract the results, and there is a certain answer threshold that makes a team or player a success or failure. For example, the New Jersey Devils season was a success last year while the Tampa Bay Lightning’s was not. Yet, the Lightning beat the Devils in the first round.
Were not talking about that today. We’re actually talking about the Devils darling Nico Hischier.
This all started with a conversation on a message board. There, Devils fans discussed whether fans would take a Patrik Elias career out of Hischier. Without thinking, I’m sure every fan would take that. However, some fans were not so sure that would make the 2017 number-one overall pick a success.
Elias has 400+ goals, more than 1,000 points, 125 postseason points and two Stanley Cups. I will take that from Hischier easily. It may be a little different since Elias played a majority of his career on the wing, but every draft can’t provide a Hall of Famer at first overall. We should take a borderline Hall of Famer and all timer for the franchise if we get the chance.
So the question is, what’s the minimum acceptable output of Hischier’s career to be considered a success?
I know, this is WAY too early to consider, but it’s August so let’s have some fun before the skates hit the ice.
Hischier has 52 points in his rookie campaign. If he played 20 seasons and averaged that point total, he’d have 1,040 points, more than Elias. Now, there are a lot of factors to consider when talking about Hischier’s career. He will deal with injuries. Hischier will deal with changing linemates. There will be up years and down years for the team. I don’t want to say it, but it’s unfortunately the truth. There’s a chance there could be a lockout. Again.
Okay, now that we have all of that out of the way, let’s speculate.
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Let’s say Hischier actually takes the leap this season. He adds 20 points on his total and scored 70 points. If Hischier can score 70 points in his age 19 season, then he can likely hit 90 by the time he hits his prime at 25 to 27 years old. That’s obviously in a perfect world.
A perfect world is not necessary for success. As long as we get a very good world from our highest ever draft pick, we’d be happy. So, where does that lie?
Basically, Hischier has to be top 15-20 every year of his prime, and top 30 in the league in the surrounding years. Artemi Panarin was the 20th ranked scorer in the league this year with 82 points. Multiply that by four years, and you have 328 points from 25-29 years old for Hischier. Then, add six years where he scores Alexander Radulov numbers (he scored 72 points this season). That gives him 760 points over 10 of his best seasons. He will score 300 points combined in six other seasons.
I think Nico really needs to break 1,000 points to have a successful career. Especially since he’ll spend his entire career being compared to Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews. As long as he stays among the elites in the league, he will be well worth that number-one overall pick.