Jack Hughes is BACK!... at New Jersey Devils practice

UPDATE: Jack Hughes confirmed after practice that he is indeed back Sunday night against the Buffalo Sabres!

The New Jersey Devils have been devastated by injuries in November and December. To be honest, the injuries have been a problem from Day 1 of training camp when we learned that Stefan Noesen was going to miss time. Since then, literally 70% of the regular starting lineup has missed time already.

The most important (and bizarre) of those injuries was the one to Jack Hughes. The Devils' top scorer was playing at a blistering pace prior to his injury, and he was doing a great job avoiding unnecessary contact while still getting great looks in the offensive zone. It looked like this was finally going to be the year that Hughes would stay healthy and carry the Devils to the next level.

Then he got hurt at a restaurant. It's one of those "you can't make this stuff up" type of stories. Hughes got hurt on broken glass at Chicago Cut during a team dinner on the road. It was an insane story that has derailed the Devils' season. Well, only slightly.

The Devils have been terrible at times, but they've also had great singular performances to keep them in a playoff spot. Most recently, Jake Allen and Jacob Markstrom have put together back-to-back incredible outings to get the Devils four points on a West Coast swing to Vegas and Utah. Those two wins have the Devils holding firmly on to the final Wild Card spot in an ultra-competitive Eastern Conference.

Despite teams all around them getting points in the standings, the Devils have sustained without Jack Hughes (and a host of other players). On Sunday, it looks like the hockey nightmare is close to over. Hughes is back... on the practice ice.

If it were just Jack Hughes returning to practice in a regular jersey, that would be a huge boost on its own. However, he wasn’t the only one. Arseny Gritsyuk, Johnny Kovacevic, and Timo Meier, who was out for a personal issue. 

All of these players aren’t expected to be in the lineup on Sunday against the Buffalo Sabres, as there’s still some money to be moved to figure out the salary cap, but seeing so much talent return to the ice prior to the Christmas Break is amazing.

Hughes’s original timeline, as released by the Devils, was eight weeks. We’re not even hitting the six-week mark, so this would be a superhuman level of recovery from Hughes. It’s a pinky injury officially. The hope is there won’t be any long-term impacts to his grip or shooting strength, but just getting Hughes back in the lineup would be huge. 

Let’s hope this is the start of a great stretch for the team that is still just one point out of second place in the Metropolitan Division.