Jack Hughes is missing from the New Jersey Devils, and his team has been awful. They are coming off an 8-4 deconstruction at the hands of the undermanned Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a tough watch. Luke Hughes was bad despite scoring. Jacob Markstrom was bad, again. Jake Allen wasn’t much better. The penalty kill was atrocious, and Jesper Bratt’s first goal in 16 games didn’t save them.
The Devils need Hughes back in the worst way. However, his injury takes time to heal, and there’s nothing one can do to speed it up. He hurt his pinky. It needed surgery. The timeline was six weeks for evaluation and a predicted eight weeks to fully recover.
If we take that timeline literally, Jack Hughes will be fully healthy on January 10th. The Devils play a back-to-back the next day, facing the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild on consecutive nights. It starts a run of 13 games in 25 nights heading into the Olympic break.
It would be enough to showcase his ability to the Olympic committee, but there’s one issue. The decision will already have been made by the time Hughes is back.
Bill Guerin, Team USA’s general manager, just revealed on the On the Rink podcast that he still hasn’t made his final decision on the Olympic roster. He mentioned injuries, which include Hughes, Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy, New York Rangers defenseman Adam Fox, and Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk.
"This goes without saying anyways, but I think with how some of the injuries have taken place you have to have Plan A, Plan B and Plan C because you don't know. We have to name the team, but then after we name the team there's a massive gap with a lot of games to be played and we don't know what's going to happen, so you've got to be ready for anything."Bill Guerin, Team USA GM
Will Guerin, who has to make his roster decision by the end of this year, go with a player who doesn’t have the history of injuries that Jack Hughes has? Even if Hughes survives until the Olympics, there’s a chance he could get hurt while he’s there. That’s the real issue. It would hurt both the Olympic team, which would scramble to get someone used to playing and another body across the Atlantic Ocean.
On top of that, it’s not like Jack Hughes was incredible at the 4 Nations Face-Off. He had trouble really gelling with Auston Matthews. He was playing wing, but he didn’t impress. He wasn’t terrible, but Devils fans expected more.
The wrinkle in this is Tom Fitzgerald is on Guerin’s committee. He will help him choose the roster. Will he pound the table for his star player to get to the Olympics? Is there any world where he allows Hughes to stay home to keep him healthy for a year in which Fitzgerald’s job is on the line? That would be a hard conversation to have, so we’d doubt that would happen, but we need to discuss all possibiilities.
As of right now, it still feels crazy that Hughes would be left off the roster, but we also have to find room for Tage Thompson, Jason Robertson, Cole Caufield, and Clayton Keller. Some other names, like Matthew Knies, Alex DeBrincat, and Cutter Gauthier, could make the team. For every addition, there has to be a cut.
Let’s see what happens, but Hughes unfortunately has no chance to prove himself from now until December 31st.