New Jersey Devils: Nico Hischier Is Just Getting Started
By Sam Woo
The mecca of all Monday Morning Quarterback clickbait hockey content was written by NHL.com’s Adam Kimelman and posted on a Friday before the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
“The Redraft” of the 2017 NHL Draft has Cale Makar at the top of the class with the New Jersey Devils picking him first overall. And rightfully so. But, what surprised me was Nico Hischier dropping all the way down to number 9. This fanned the flames on social media and the ongoing debate if the New Jersey Devils missed out on Makar and made a mistake by drafting Hischier.
Number one, there is no question that the biggest mistake has to be the Philadelphia Flyers picking Nolan Patrick. He’s not even on the team anymore. It obviously did not work out for either party as the number-two overall pick. He was eventually dealt to the Vegas Golden Knights.
Secondly, this article was written only five years after that draft. Each player mentioned is still writing their own story as we speak and have not yet entered the prime of their respective careers. It is not fair to compare Makar’s meteoric rise to Hischier’s respectable performance as the Devils’ captain. Moreover, Kimelman’s redraft article is pretty accurate up until this point but it was not intended to make a final judgment of where they’ll rank in hockey history.
In 2017, the Avalanche were further along in their rebuild than the Devils with Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog as their young core nucleus. The Devils were going through an entire organizational rebuild and modernizing their scouting and analytics departments. You can make the argument that Makar’s career would not have comparisons to Bobby Orr if he had been drafted by the Devils or any other team for that matter. Who knows? Maybe Hischier could have won the Calder Trophy and Stanley Cup already with Avalanche had he been drafted at number 4. You just simply don’t know.
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Remember, it’s not how you start. It’s how you finish. And Nico Hischier still has the rest of his career to finish on top!