A New Year | 10 TAKEAWAYS

Happy New Year everyone!

So happy to be back for another year of 10 Takeaways where I get to share all my favorite stories and insights that might not make it into our other articles or videos. I'm always so thankful for the response everyone has to these and I'm looking forward to many more!

Wishing everyone the absolute best in 2024!

Let's kick off the year with our first 10 Takeaways, presented by Ticketmaster!

1.

Something I couldn’t quite fit into my story about Brendan Smith and his grandparents… had to share it here because we’ve all had these types of experiences with our grandparents:

"Some nights all three of us would play," Smith started, "He'd be at home and he'd have all three shirts on. So he'd have like the Red Wings one on top, and then underneath, he would have Riley's Boston and then (Rory's) New York Titans. And so he would take them off, watch whatever game was on first, and then take that one off and put another back on for the next period. He would be in the basement and would have three TVs up and they'd be watching all three games. The announcer would be talking about a Smith and he would get confused because he'd be like 'The announcers really don't like Reilly tonight,' and someone would be like 'No, they're talking about Brendan!'"

2.

There are only three spots left for Brendan Smith’s Kan Jam this coming weekend. In attendance will be all his teammates and each of the 32 teams.

Trust me, it’s an event you really don’t want to miss if you can be there. Not only are you supporting a fantastic cause, but you will literally get to call a member of the Devils your actual teammate. It’s not hockey, no, but your team will be paired with a current member of the Devils who will be part of your group in the Round Robin-style tournament.

It’s not every day there’s an event like this, so make sure if you’re able to, you get involved!

3.

Doesn't matter how good a player you are, if you're a rookie, you get the rookie treatment of sorts. And for Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec that means playing clean-up after a lot of practices, making sure all the pucks are off the ice before the zamboni comes out to clean.

But, they're also a bunch of kids, so what's cleaning up without a couple of games first? I caught this one the other day:

4.

Not sure he still qualifies as a rookie, but Alexander Holtz has taken over the warmup routine spot that Damon Severson held for so many years. As players get ready to run their lines and pairings, all the pucks need to be distributed to all the players who are staying in the neutral zone. For many, many years, it was Severson who swept them out of the net and to the middle of the ice.

Now that role has fallen to Alexander Holtz.

5.

This might be my favorite story of the end of 2023…. Sadly, I don’t think it’s really taken off as a nickname, but Palat and I did get a good laugh about it once he saw the tweet. “Oscar?! Really?!” he said through a laugh.

Hey, look, I’m just the innocent bystander passing on the message. And no, I didn't bother correcting the people in the elevator. I get the two names start with 'O' but 'Oscar' and 'Ondrej', I'm not sure how you get those intertwined!

6.

Five of Luke’s seven career goals have been assisted in some way by his brother Jack.

Luke’s third career goal was scored in November against the Buffalo Sabres and was unassisted, while his two most recent goals were assisted by Alexander Holtz and Chris Tierney, as well as Tyler Toffoli and Jesper Bratt respectively, leaving his brother behind.

7.

Fun story about Graeme Clarke and his ties to Jack Hughes. Both players grew up in the Toronto Malboros system in Ontario. When both were with the U16AAA team, Jack Hughes, in 80 games totaled 159 points (58 goals, 101 assists), while Graeme Clarke was second on the team with 136 points in 81 games. But Clarke did edge out Jack in goals with 82 in 81 games, with 54 assists.

It's pretty incredible how the Greater Toronto Area produced so many of the players we see today in the Devils organization, even more incredible is that they're all in the same age range, making the NHL at roughly the same time. 

8.

It's not every day that you see three different players have multi-goal nights in a game. On Wednesday night, that honor belonged to captain Nico Hischier, Dawson Mercer and Michael McLeod. It's really quite a rare thing. 

The last time it happened in franchise history? March 17, 2016, when Mike Sislo, Devonte Smith Pelley and Adam Henrique all scored against Minnesota.

9.

I truly cannot believe Nico Hischier turned 25 today.

25!

I always use Nico as my barometer for how long I’ve been with the organization because we both made our debuts at the start of the 2017-18 season. Nico was just 18 and well, I definitely wasn’t 18, but lets just say I’m a great deal older than Nico, so to see him hit 25 is kind of surreal.

Wishing him happy birthday in the locker room in Washington, albeit a few hours early of his Jan. 4 birthday, Hischier, ever so gracious said thank you, but then chimed in with “Ah, I feel so old now.”

My response?

“Nico, imagine how I feel about this!”

If he feels old, I feel ancient knowing that the kid I started with in the organization is definitely not a kid anymore. 

I will say this, I feel incredibly fortunate to have started my career in New Jersey with Hischier coming into the league as that building block towards the success the team is now rising toward. You feel part of something special.

10.

It's really in the last calendar year that we've seen Jack Hughes explode as a superstar in the NHL and he's got the points to prove it. Just did some number crunching and from Jan. 1, 2023 to Dec. 31st 2023 Jack Hughes is in the Top 10 of point scorers in the entire league. 

Hughes ranks 7th with 102 points with some other pretty elite players ahead of him. Noteworthy is Hughes has played the least amount of games of all seven players.