The Impossible Angle | 10 TAKEAWAYS

We're back for another week of 10 Takeaways, presented by Ticketmaster.

This week we take a trip down memory lane, catching up with some former New Jersey Devils who made their way through Prudential Center this week and of course, we have to start with the much-anticipated return of Jack Hughes. 

On Monday night he picked up his first points since returning from injury and his goal is exactly where we start, because it was one we have seen before from Jack and so few others are able to accomplish. 

1.

There he goes again, at the goal line, from the impossible angle and zeroing in on the goalies head. One quick flick of the wrist and he doesn’t miss his target.

We should probably work together to find a nickname for this type of Jack Hughes goal, after all he’s done it quite a few times and they’ve worked. Please offer up your suggestions! 

Turns out, this is a move Jack has been pulling since he was a young kid.

“That’s a move (Cameron) Rowe is quite familiar with,” Corey Masisak of The Athletic wrote in an article from 2019, just before Hughes was drafted by New Jersey.

Rowe was a goaltender for the USNTDP and was teammates with Jack.  So it's a move he's been trying to master and has had in his arsenal for quite some time.

“He’s done that to me, like six or seven times,” Rowe said, “I was going to mention that earlier, but I didn’t want to give away any of his hidden talents.”

The secrets out now. And turns out, even though it's an open secret, it doesn't make it any easier to predict!

2.

More from Rowe in Masisak's article: 

“I remember the first time he did that. It was basically a full clapper from below the goal line,” he said. “It hit me in the back of the head and went in. I just looked at him like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ He did that, like, six or seven times. So every time Jack was on his forehand below the goal line, I wouldn’t lean because I knew this thing was probably rocketing at my head.”

3.

Congratulations to Curtis Lazar who will play his 500th career game tonight!

Lazer, as he is affectionately known by his teammates, is probably one of the best, nicest people you’ll meet in the game of hockey (and I’m not just saying this because he agreed to tour Sweep the Deck with me). But he’s just got such a likable personality, always positive, always hard working and has just fit in so well here in New Jersey.

I’ll never forget what he told me when he first came over to New Jersey, about how he has found longevity in his career. When he was playing Junior hockey in the CHL, Lazar was scoring goals every which way. His best Junior season came in 2013-14 with 41 goals and 35 assists in 58 games for a whopping 76 points.

But then came the AHL and the NHL, where everything kind of changed. Scoring goals with the same ease didn’t happen, but what Lazar did was reinvent himself as a player. A hard-working, checking, grind-you-down kind of player, and lo and behold here he is at 500 games, still with a smile on his face, knowing exactly what type of player he is at this level. And he’s a mighty important piece too. You can’t have a complete hockey team without players who take on the roles that Lazar does. It takes everyone.

He’s a great example for all kids coming up through the ranks of hockey. If you love the game and want to stay in the game, you might not always be the same kind of player. But if you make those adjustments, if you accept that maybe your game will have to look like an entirely different one, that’s ok. If you embrace it, you’ll go a long way.

4.

Checked in on the NHL’s Edge website to see where some of the Devils are stacking up this year.

Turns out, Luke Hughes ranks in the Top 10, clocking in at No. 10, for a total distance skated all season on the power play by a defenseman. He’s skated 24.01 miles on the man advantage so far this season. Of course, oldest brother Quinn has to out-do his youngest brother. Quinn ranks No. 4 with 28.69 miles. Sorry, Lukey! 

As a team, all together at all strengths, the Devils have skated 2,350.64 miles this year.

5.

It’s not officially registered on Edge but on the ESPN broadcast between the Colorado Avalanche and Devils, Colin Miller’s slapshot clocked in at a league-high 105 mph.

6.

This last week has been one of a constant stream of former players who in the off-season found themselves on other teams. It was a great week to catch up with some of them as well.

I’m happy to report that Miles Wood is doing great in Colorado, he’s happy and enjoying his experience there. It was, he told me, a little strange walking into Prudential Center from a different entrance, by bus, and into a different locker room.

“I won’t lie, my heart was racing a little bit,” he said.

It caught him a bit off-guard.

“When we were taking the bus, it was strange because I was like ‘Oh yeah, I know that place’, ‘I used to live there’. It was weird.”

You could see when Miles received his Welcome Back video it was an emotional moment. From all the moments I’ve spent with Miles, as tough as he can be, he has a really warm heart and is an emotional guy. When he tapped his chest and acknowledged the crowd, that moment was truly heart-felt for him and you just know he A) felt the love and B) wanted to give it back.

7.

Then came Yegor Sharangovich. As much as I would have liked to see him on the ice for morning skate, I was also kind of thankful there would be no one shooting pucks at the glass, right at my head when I was looking down to scare me.

I am very jumpy, even when I can see what’s about to happen.

Anyways, I was chatting with some of the Calgary media and they were asking me about Shar, what’s he like, how was he here in New Jersey. I told them about Ham, his bird. Everyone got a good kick out of that.

Turns out though, unfortunately Ham did not make his way up to Calgary, what with importing animals from one country into another and all that goes along with that, but they did find him a very good home to go to.

Happy for Ham and happy for Shar.

8.

If only Ham was given to Jesper Brat… he could be the bird that Bratt joked he would need to send across the Giants locker room to respond to a teammate's question during a Stadium Series intermission coming up this weekend.

The Devils will be using the New York Giants locker room as their own this coming weekend and the size of that room compared to an NHL locker room, there’s a bigtime difference that Bratt, Nico Hischier, and Timo Meier got a taste of.

Check out their tour and imagine it will be all dolled up in the black and red for the Devils in just a few short days.

9.

Last week I had a chance to chat with prospect Seamus Casey to get a glimpse into his sophomore season at Michigan. Is he ever the Chatty Cathy, which is great for someone like me always looking for a great story?

One of the things that didn’t make it into the story but that we did end up talking about for a while was his time in Sweden for the World Juniors and what he was able to do when the team had time off, albeit, there wasn’t a ton.

Seamus joked there was a moment where he was trying to buy himself a new hat, ("We went to the mall, just being normal kids") and getting a little shell-shocked and taken aback when it rang in at 380... except it wasn't dollars, it was Krowners. That's roughly 35 dollars, but I totally get that feeling of seeing 380 and trying to wrap your head around that number being so high, but then remember it's not dollars. 

And then there were the crowds, completely different than the North American experience.

“It’s like playing soccer,” Casey said, “It was like I was watching a Premier League game or something when we played Finland. And then when we played Sweden, it was obviously our biggest crowd. That Sweden game was like being at the World Cup or something. The crowd was just so loud and they all, 10-15 thousand of them, knew all the chants. And it was like they never repeated a single chant once. It was kind of crazy.”

10.

So where is that Gold medal from the tournament? “I gave it to my parents and said maybe you guys do something cool with it and give it back to me when I’m out of school.”