The NHL 15: A healthy Jack Hughes changes the game (and expectations) for Devils

The New Jersey Devils can make some noise this season if their best player is able to stay on the ice.

Before each NHL season I look at 15 players that I think are the most intriguing players in the NHL. Not necessarily the best players (though, sometimes they are), but players that offer some sort of intrigue, a big storyline or figure to be a major X-factor for the season. This is The NHL 15. We continue today with New Jersey Devils forward Jack Hughes, and how his ability to stay on the ice significantly changes what to expect from the team.

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There are a lot of different ways to win a championship in the NHL.

And I would argue this mindset applies across all sports and is not just limited to hockey.

There is a danger in the copycat mentality of professional sports where everybody thinks you have to model the most recent team to find success. There are a lot of different playing styles, strategies and methods that can produce a championship-caliber team. Sometimes you do not have the personnel to play a certain way, and trying to do so hurts you more than just simply playing to your strengths would.

You can win with speed, skill and offense.

You can win with defense and size.

You can with with both.

You can win in a variety of different ways.

Sometimes it even makes sense to zig when everybody else in the league zags. It is how you find undervalued talent and talent that might slip through the cracks. It can exploit other team’s weaknesses.

But while there are different paths for victory in terms of playing style, Stanley Cup teams do tend to need two very important ingredients to them.

• They need at least one superstar, elite-level player. Whether that player is a forward, a defenseman, a goalie, whatever the case might be, there needs to be at least one elite player somewhere on the roster. In many cases, you need two of them. Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Somebody that can take over the occasional game, swing a series, and just be a difference-maker. It’s really, really hard to win without at least one of those guys. Go back over the past 10, 15, 20 or 25 Stanley Cup winners and find one of them that doesn’t have at least one player like that. Depending on how highly you value prime Vladimir Tarasenko or Alex Pietrangelo, the St. Louis Blues in 2018-19 might be the only team that can make that argument. But Tarasenko and Pietrangleo were also pretty damn good.

• They also need some depth. They need a second-and third-(and ideally a fourth) line that is capable of chipping in offense and making a difference. No matter how good your superstars are, there is going to come a point in a long playoff run where they are going to go cold for a stretch of games from an offensive standpoint. The puck will simply not go in the net for them. They can not do it all every single night. A lot of times in a best-of-seven series your team’s top-lines will cancel each other out and it will come down to who has a more productive third line. A third-line with Phil Kessel on it in Pittsburgh. A Blake Coleman-Yanni Gourde-Barclay Goodrow line in Tampa Bay. Just a balanced lineup that can keep rolling through teams.

I bring all of this up because the New Jersey Devils have spent the past few years assembling what should be a pretty good hockey team on paper. At least when it’s healthy.

They have some really high-end players on their roster, they have some depth, and they made efforts to solidify their goaltending in recent years. They have also had some success by making the playoffs in two of the past three seasons, and winning a round in 2022-23.

But I also feel like they have not quite fully reached their potential just yet, and a big part of that has been the fact their impact players, including their biggest superstar, Jack Hughes, have missed a lot of time due to injury.

The 2023-24 season in particular was completely ruined by injuries (and bad goaltending) as Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Dougie Hamilton all missed significant time. Sometimes at the same time.

In 2024-25, the Devils received better goaltending and had somewhat better injury luck, only to have Hughes go down with another significant injury late in the season and ending his campaign with more than a month remaining in the season. They went into the playoffs without him and did not really stand a chance.

In the early stages of the 2025-26 season, Hughes is not only healthy, he is playing like a man possessed and has helped the Devils became a force through the first two weeks of the season.

This is a good team that made some shrewd depth additions in the offseason and has its best player playing like a maniac. It could potentially change a lot for this team’s ceiling.

Let’s talk about that.