New Jersey Devils: Ray Shero Must Build Around Jack Hughes

With the 2019 NHL Draft coming up in over a month from today let’s make some points on why New Jersey Devils GM Ray Shero is going to announce Jack Hughes as the 1st-overall pick.

During Ray’s first draft with the New Jersey Devils, which included Lou Lamoriello and David Conte, they clearly made a mistake in choosing Pavel Zacha of the OHL’s Sarnia Sting. He’s more of a power forward in what ended up being a stacked draft. Later on the next year Ray Shero chose Michael McLeod from the Mississauga Steelheads out of the OHL. He looks like another botton-six center at this point. In the same draft, Ray has found a pretty good bottom-mid 6 winger in Nathan Bastian also from the Steelheads hockey program who could be a more modern version of Brian Boyle.

Now back to Jack Hughes. He is a 5’10” 170 pound, 18-year-old center. He is a very dynamic player who uses his hockey sense to make players better around him. A playmaker who plays well along the boards and covers odd-man rushes.

One of the other fascinating skills the way he processes his agility and speed with so effectively. Jack is a very unselfish player who opens up the offensive zone to create havoc for the opposing team and makes plays at full throttle look so effortless.

The way he played in the U-18 tournament was nothing short of absolute domination. He broke Alexander Ovechkin’s scoring record.

Hughes on his worst day always seems to change the outcome of a game even beyond the score sheet. He can control the game by forechecking, creating momentum through zone entries, and entering the opponents end without having to dump the puck.

In today’s game, you have smaller, faster players who have been game changers at center in the past like Nico Hischier. They may not much much taller than six feet, but have the hockey IQ and hockey sense to complement their skating, stick handling, and shooting. Another player similar to that with a lot of skill is Clayton Keller of The Arizona Coyotes who is also Jack Hughes’ teammate for Team USA.

With a center like Nico Hischier shredding it up for team Switzerland it would be very dynamic to have three established centers in New Jersey: Hughes, Hischier, and Travis Zajac.

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Ray Shero has been known to build around top-six centers from his GM days in Pittsburgh. Sidney Crosby–Evgeni Malkin were the one-two punch he had there. With Paul Castron as DOA scouting, this shouldn’t be as complicated as the Nico vs. Nolan draft back in 2017.

Ray Shero will talk to the podium on Friday, June 21st, he will thank the fans back in New Jersey, he will thank Vancouver for hosting, then he says the magic words “With the first overall selection we are proud to select from the US National Development Team.. Jack Hughes.” It will be a similar excitement that we felt when Nico was chosen two years earlier.

Since the partial-season lockout of 2013, hockey has become a very fast-paced game that in a blink of an eye a team like the New Jersey Devils would possess lines of Hall-Hughes-Palmieri, Bratt-Hischier-Boqvist and maybe Wood-Zajac-McLeod, and the 4th line Coleman-Boyle-Zacha. Obviously, some things have to fall into place first.

That wouldn’t be the final four lines for the Devils because July 1st hasn’t arrived yet. Because Ray has a lot of assets from draft picks to cap space that he can take on a trade like a William Nylander, Kasperi Kapanen, and PK Subban.

This situation reminds me of a moment I had on The Let’s Go Devils Podcast talking about “plucking a guy” from cap strapped teams. One of those trade targets that I think fits the bill is PK Subban. Subban has a really high cap hit that David Poile would be glad to do business again with Ray Shero.

Shero and Poile are hockey lifers from their early days in Nashville back in 2003. The next best target I’m looking into is over in Toronto. Kyle Dubas the GM over in Toronto only has a cap hit of $3,883,526 per Capfriendly.com before the cap goes up.

Ray has done very well with snagging guys who are up and coming who have high potential to possibly breakout into prime time scorers. The last few big offensive powered wingers Ray Shero has plucked have been Taylor Hall, and Kyle Palmieri. If Ray can get Kapanen or Nylander who are both former number 1 picks from the Phil Kessel trade. That trade for a trade would be one of the most productive in Ray Shero’s time helping build around Taylor Hall, Jack Hughes, Palmieri, and Jesper Bratt to name a few.