5 Players New Jersey Devils Can’t Afford To Get Injured This Season

1. Jack Hughes

The most important player to keep healthy is the one who gave us a scare over the weekend. Jack Hughes is the key to this Devils winning formula. He is expected to have a major breakout season, and an injury would derail that immediately.

Hughes has had two very tumultuous seasons to start his career. His first season sucked. Straight up. He wasn’t good, his head coach was fired, his star player was traded, then the GM who drafted his was fired, and on top of it all, his captain was traded. That was one of the worst rookie seasons a first-overall pick had to endure.

In his second season, he looked like a different player to start. He was dominant with Nico Hischier on the shelf, and he looked like a legitimate top-line player. He was beating opposing players to the puck, and he was making his own plays and scoring goals. Then he got COVID. And everyone else got COVID. The rest of the team fell in the tank, and it was another lost season.

Hughes is now in his contract year, and he’s trying to show he can be the type of player worth star money. He’s shown flashes of it, but he needs to prove it on a season-long basis. Also, the Devils themselves can’t afford a Hughes injury. Then, they’d probably have to put Sharangovich to center, and that completely changes his focus. It moves his expectations, and his goal-scoring ability goes down by a lot.