New Jersey Devils: Jack Hughes And Nico Hischier Celebrate Huge Weekends

The New Jersey Devils came out of the Christmas break/COVID-19 pause on a major downhill slope. What was a promising year to start quickly became the same old story of a team that can’t get over the hump. However, since their return, they have (for now) turned things around and looked mostly good while doing it.

Of course, even with the three straight wins, there have been some lows as well. They allowed their opponent to make some sort of comeback in all three games but the Devils locked in and won them all. It isn’t a recipe for sustained success but they are a young team trying to find the way.

The first win was Wednesday of last week and it was against the Buffalo Sabres. Although they are close to New Jersey in the standings, they are not close to them in terms of overall talent. The Devils desperately needed to beat them and they did.

Coming into New Years’ weekend, the Devils had the Edmonton Oilers and Washington Capitals on the slate. The Oilers are a good team and the Capitals are a great team. It was like the level of the opponent was increasing for all three games in this stretch.

The New Jersey Devils took care of business this weekend thanks to their stars.

In those two games, despite having players like Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Alexander Ovechkin, and Evgeny Kuznetsov on the other side, the Devils did what they needed to do in order to win and make it a three-game winning streak. Friday’s New Year’s Eve victory, like the one on Sunday, was an overtime thriller.

In the two weekend wins, the Devils had major contributions from their two star centerman. Both Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier scored in overtime to secure extra standings points. We are finally seeing the team’s two first-overall picks play to their talent level. They each had points against Buffalo as well.

Jack Hughes has eight points in this three-game return and Hischier is on a five-game point streak. For Hughes, that is now eight goals and eight assists for 16 points in 16 games. He is a point-per-game player as of right now.

Hischier isn’t as offensively gifted as Hughes, but he is still an amazing player. He as a lot of assists but his goal totals were down early. He needed his shooting percentage to come way up and it was obviously going to because it is impossible for it to stay as low as it was. He was shooting under 7% going into the break. After these three games, his shooting percentage is over 10% on the season. Now that his goal numbers are starting to come up, he is getting much closer to also being a point-per-game player.

If the Devils want to continue winning lots of hockey games, both of these guys need to produce like this. Nobody scores in every game but the elite players have great chances every night. Hughes and Hischier are both capable of doing that.

With some of the other studs on the team around them, it becomes that much easier. The Devils are back in action with Nico and Jack on Tuesday when they take on the Boston Bruins at the TD Garden.

It should be a fun matchup because the Bruins have a bunch of great players for the youngsters on the New Jersey Devils to look up to. With Hischier and Hughes playing like this, the Bruins better be ready for it themselves.