New Jersey Devils center Jack Hughes had a weird season. He was playing well to start the year, but then he almost severed his hand at a team dinner. It’s one of those stories that will live on forever in Devils lore.
After a really good start to the season for the Devils, the Hughes injury was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was one of about a dozen players who had been injured in the first two months. He was about for close to two months, during which the Devils watched the Minnesota Wild trade for his brother instead of his own team.
When he returned at the end of December, he was wearing a cast under his hockey glove. It was clearly impacting him ability to play.
He scored a goal in his return, whic was a loss to the Buffalo Sabres. That was the last goal he would score in more than a month. From his return on December 21st to the Olympic break that started on February 9th, Hughes had two goals. He did have 14 assists in January, but he lost all the zip on his shot.
Then, at the Olympics, he started playing without a brace. And then he scored the Golden Goal.
After that, Hughes was a different player. He returned to the Devils with an eye to make a miraculous run to the playoffs. While that came well short, as the Devils dug too deep a hole in his absence and during his days with a cast, he still scored 10 goals and added 14 assists in March. He would finish the season with five goals and nine assists in eight games of April.
Clearly, Hughes was a man possessed, and he was recognized for that effort. There were 26 players in the NHL who got a Hart Trophy vote this season. Hughes was one of them. He tied Ilya Sorokin, who carried the Islanders all season, Gabriel Landeskog, which seems like an equally weird choice to Hughes, and Logan Thompson, who was the Washington Capitals’ best player all season. Sorokin and Thompson were two-three in Vezina Trophy voting.
What’s even crazier is Hughes’s brother, who went on an insane tear and finished with one fewer point than Jack, only got two votes. Many admitted that Hughes, who had more than a point per game after his trade to the Minnesota Wild, was clearly the second-best player at his position. Yet, he only got one more MVP vote than his brother, who played half the season with one hand.
