By Rejuvenating Once Dormant Devils, Hughes Has Entered The Hart Conversation
With the NHL’s season about a week past its halfway point, Connor McDavid has to be labelled as the frontrunner for the league’s Hart Trophy award as its Most Valuable Player. Edmonton’s star center is on his way to lapping the competition in points, leading the league in both goals and assists.
Creeping up somewhere in the conversation, however, is Devils center Jack Hughes, who keeps building an impressive case for consideration as a finalist. New Jersey’s No. 1 selection in the 2019 NHL Draft has been the catalyst in the team’s rise from the ashes this season. After sweeping a three-game California swing for the first time since 2000, the Devils (29-12-3), who haven’t reached the postseason in five years, have shockingly moved within one point of first-place Carolina in the Eastern Conference race.
Hughes is on “a heater”, as he likes to call it, with 11 goals and 5 assists in his last nine games, during which New Jersey has gone 7-1-1 to reverse a slide where they had lost eight of their previous nine contests.
Don’t blame Hughes for that slump—he produced eight points in those games. In fact, he has been held off the scoresheet in just 11 of the Devils’ 44 games.
Hughes was dominant in the two games in the Los Angeles area, registering a pair of goals and three assists as New Jersey defeated the lowly Ducks, 6-2, on Friday before stunning the rising Kings, 5-2, on Saturday’s back-to-back. Playing his third game in four days in San Jose on Monday afternoon, Hughes didn’t quite have the freshest of legs for most of the game. He was turning pucks over and the Sharks scored to go up 3-2 seconds after his high-sticking penalty expired about six minutes into the third period.
But with the game on the line, Hughes found a little magic left in his tank, taking a Dougie Hamilton pass above the left circle and doing his patented skate-up into a wrist shot that deflected off Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson’s stick and past goalie James Reimer with less than 10 seconds remaining. The Devils went on to win it, 4-3, in a shootout, with Tomas Tatar scoring the lone goal.
Hughes played the majority of his 25:47 of ice time with Tatar and Erik Haula, two players known more for blown scoring opportunities than for their positive contributions, as his wingers. I get that Devils Head Coach Lindy Riff likes to split Hughes and wing Jesper Bratt to better balance his forward lines, but I can only imagine where Hughes’ numbers would be if they played together more often—per NaturalStatTrick.com, the Devils have outscored their opponents, 17-7, in the 282 minutes the duo has been paired at five-on-five this season.
Both players exhibit wonderful edge work and can stop-and-burst their way past defenders, but Hughes has taken his skating—and his whole game, really—to another level this season. Listed at 5-foot 11 and 170 pounds, Hughes’ shot was thought to be a weaker aspect coming out of the U.S. National Team Development Program. Instead, it has become a weapon where he is beating goalies from all angles, once even purposely banking a puck in from behind the goal line.
Hughes leads all Devils forwards in ice time per game, often double-shifting in third periods. At the end of New Jersey’s 6-4 loss to the Islanders on December 9, Ruff kept Hughes on for an incredible 6:02 run that set an NHL record going back to the 2007-08, when the league started tracking ice time. Diving deeper, he played all but 19 seconds of the final 7:52—and he was still buzzing around until the final horn whereas I’d bet that even the most fit pros would be gasping for air if tasked with that marathon.
I don’t want to diminish what McDavid has accomplished this season to date one iota--the NHL Players Association votes on the annual Ted Lindsay Award to honor the league’s best player and McDavid’s combination of breathtaking speed and electric dynamism has been incomparable. The vote should be unanimous.
The MVP, however, is open to different interpretations. Despite McDavid’s heroics, the Oilers are currently hanging on to the Western Conference’s final wild card slot, three games over real .500. While it’s likely that Edmonton would be chasing the Connor Bedard 2023 Draft lottery sweepstakes without him, you have to compare that with how Hughes has rejuvenated a dormant franchise. If the Devils can maintain their pace through the remainder of the season—admittedly a big if—the Professional Hockey Writer’s Association would have to measure how much of each of the candidates’ performances contributed to their team’s results, giving greater weight to the players on more successful teams.
A factor against Hughes has been the play of teammate Nico Hischier, who is technically the Devils’ first-line center and has made an impact in all situations while potting his 20th goal of the season on Sunday to tie the contest at 2-2. It can be argued that Hischier’s value cuts into Hughes’ case, though it should be noted that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins also has 21 goals while centering Edmonton’s second line.
McDavid and Hughes are each threats to score every time they hop over the boards, but the advanced stats indicate that the ice has been tilted more with Hughes—the Devils own a 62.59% expected goals percentage, the seventh highest in the league (minimum 300 minutes played, per NST), with Hughes versus Edmonton’s 56.04% with McDavid. To repeat, Hughes has been doing this while saddled with a pair of wingers who have combined to score 13 goals, not a player who ripped the twines 55 times last season on McDavid’s wing like Leon Draisaitl.
At this stage, I’m more concerned that Hughes stays healthy—I shudder every time he’s banged into the boards—over where he stands in the Hart race. In addition to McDavid, Hughes will face competition from high-end point producers such as Boston’s David Pasternak and Dallas’ Jason Robertson. However, just like I did with Taylor Hall in 2018 when I covered the Devils for WFAN (Lichtenstein: Hall For The Hart — If The Devils Make The Playoffs (audacy.com) I believe it’s never too early for advocacy.