Jack Hughes was the 57th player in NHL history to be selected first overall in his draft year. Many of them made an immediate impact on their teams. Some, like Jack Hughes, did not.
Hughes lugged the baggage of expectations into his rookie season and was crushed under the weight of them. He had seven goals, 14 assists and skated to a minus-26 in his 61 games played in the 2019-20 season. It was the lowest points-per-game average for a first overall pick in more than 20 years.
"He felt like everyone was just looking at him and waiting for him to do everything. He had a hard time getting going," Martin Brodeur, the Devils executive VP of hockey operations, told ESPN.
In fairness to Hughes, his rookie season was, to put it kindly, tumultuous. His first coach, John Hynes, was fired two months into the season. The general manager who drafted him, Ray Shero, was fired a month after that. In between, the team's star player Taylor Hall was traded to the Arizona Coyotes before he could walk away as a free agent. The Devils finished the truncated season with 68 points; despite the NHL expanding the postseason to 24 teams in its summer bubble restart, New Jersey's season was over on March 12.
It was a lot for any player to handle, let alone an 18-year-old rookie.
"And he was definitely a young 18," said Brodeur with a laugh.
Hughes didn't earn a single vote for the Calder Trophy. An additional thorn in his pride: Jack's brother, Vancouver Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes, finished second in the rookie of the year race.
In a forgettable rookie season for a first-year player with such heavy hype, Hughes felt a lot of emotions. But embarrassment wasn't one of them.
"If someone five years ago told me that I could play in the NHL by the time I was 18, that's pretty damn good, you know? I was proud to be the youngest guy in the NHL. It was a huge honor," he told ESPN. "Last year didn't go the way I wanted it, but if you asked me if I could have done that or go to school or done something else, I would have picked that 100 times over.
"Look, you come into the league, you're expected to perform. It obviously was good motivation for me to work on my game and become a different player."
It's undeniable that at the start of his second season, Jack Hughes looks like a different player.
Hughes, 19, has eight points in nine games. It took him 14 games to hit eight points last season. He's present this season in a way he wasn't as a rookie: dangerous shifts in the offensive zone, using his speed to create scoring chances. There's a joy to his game that was missing last season. Hughes admitted that his play felt perfunctory through all the Devils' adversity.
"It was tough. But I was getting paid by the Devils. You have to show up and go to the rink and try to perform," he said. "It's pretty simple. You just have to be mentally tough and grind it out. You don't have a choice to give in. You just have to keep moving forward."
Hughes played his last game of the 2019-20 season on March 10, as the NHL paused its season for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Devils weren't a playoff team. Hughes was looking at an extended offseason, and one that didn't have a clear end point.
"This wasn't a normal summer off. This was a 10-month layoff. Everyone training for the season had to be disciplined. Staying on top of it for 10 months was obviously tough, because there were no games in sight. You're usually looking forward to the start of next season, but for us at times there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, you know?" Hughes said. "But I was fortunate to get that time to work on my body and work on my game, and try to transform it a little bit."
The body work was about bulking up. Hughes knew he had to add some muscle after last season. He worked with performance coaches Brian Gallivan and Will Morlock at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Michigan, during the prolonged offseason and saw results.
"I'm a lot bigger. I put on probably 14 pounds of muscle since March," said Hughes, who went from 164 pounds at the end of last season to 180 pounds heading into Devils training camp.
"That's big," he said.
Hughes ate five to six meals a day, concentrating on high-protein meals, frequently cracking a bunch of eggs. "I treated eating like a job," he said.
Hughes trained with his brothers and other USA National Team Development Program alumni.
"He's got a great network of people that train with him, including his brothers. His dad's a hockey guy. He has the USA Hockey training facility right there where they live," said Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald.
While dealing with his body, Hughes was also dealing with the mechanics of his shot.
"I watched a lot of film. Changed a few things in my technique. Changed my curve. There's a lot of things that come to it. You can't just pinpoint one thing," he said.
Hughes had a 2.38% shooting percentage at 5-on-5 last season, which was the worst for any forward who played at least 60 games. His 84 shots at even strength ranked him 189th for forwards who played at least 700 minutes.
While he's not exactly Alex Ovechkin as far as shot quantity, Hughes is third among Devils forwards with 14 shots in his first nine games this season.
"I just got into the mindset of shooting the puck," he said. "I think I can say that I'm a pass-first guy, but you gotta shoot the puck to score goals, you know? So that's just another thing I'm trying to wrap my head around. Being hungry to score."
After the body and the mechanics came the equipment, as Hughes changed the curve of his stick blade for the first time.
"My whole life I've used the same curve. To change the curve is obviously something I never thought about," he said. "But to have all that time, it gave me a chance to try something else. I ended up sticking with it. That's helped me out, for sure, but at the end of the day it all comes down to me and my mindset."
From a psychological perspective, the lumps Hughes took in his rookie season were essential to becoming the player he is in his sophomore campaign.
"He was personally disappointed. His expectations for himself were extremely high. But for us, it was not a disappointment. It was a major step forward," Fitzgerald said. "He gained one year of experience, and I think for players like Jack, it's like dog years. That's how much he learned: How good defensemen are, how they take space away. That one year is going to catapult him."
The transition to the NHL for a young center can be one of the toughest. They receive a quick, harsh education about offensive plays that worked at lower levels of hockey, whose tricks don't deceive NHL defenders. Defensively, it's a whole different level of rink-wide responsibility than they're used to -- while also having to defend against some of the biggest and most talented players in the world.
"He's getting better, getting strong and knows the league better now. He's learned what you can get away with [as an NHL player] and what you can't," Brodeur said. "He's just more assertive. He's going in and getting the puck off of guys. Winning more battles. Not that he didn't try [last season]."
Hughes said he looked forward to the "fresh start" that comes with a new coaching staff. After having John Hynes and Alain Nasreddine behind the bench last season, the Devils hired former Buffalo Sabres and Dallas Stars coach Lindy Ruff in the offseason.
Brodeur said that Ruff's coaching has had an immediate impact on Hughes. From a systems standpoint, it's taken some of the pressure off of him.
"The system we play, the first guy back acts like a centerman. It's different than the system we played where we needed him to be the first guy back and work with the defensemen. Now it's a little different, the way we play," he said.
But Ruff has also given Hughes more responsibility this season, which Brodeur said has helped build his confidence.
"I think Lindy is just managing him really well. He's saying, 'Hey kid, you're going to take some faceoffs for us defensively.' Last year, it was 'Jack, get off the ice.' He just feeds off that," Brodeur said. "But it's the fact that he's getting trusted more ... it helps him a lot. It makes him feel like he has value."
The value of Jack Hughes to the New Jersey Devils is obvious: Like Brodeur was for decades, Hughes could blossom into the rare homegrown face of the franchise for the organization. The kind of player who makes others better around him, rather than needing help to make his star shine.
Fitzgerald, a former assistant general manager with the Pittsburgh Penguins, has seen that kind of player before in franchise players like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
"Look, I'm not comparing any of these kids to Sid and Geno, because they're two of the top 100 players in the century. But the great ones make the players around them into better players. And I think Jack has that capability," Fitzgerald said. "I don't know if there's anyone that you have to put with Jack to make Jack better, because I think whoever you put with Jack, he's going to make them better."
It is, however, only Year 2 of the Jack Hughes era for the Devils.
"I'm not worried about what our record is going to be this year," Fitzgerald said. "We're going to be a better team. I call it the 'learn to win' phase. We have to learn how to win games. How not to lose games. How to hold on to leads. Manage the clock with the puck."
It's a year for growth. For the Devils as a rebuilding team. For Jack Hughes as the player they build around.
"He's the most competitive kid that I've ever seen. He expects a lot of himself. The great ones do," Fitzgerald said.