Luke Returns to Practice | NOTEBOOK

The Devils are back at practice after an extended Olympic break.

On Wednesday morning the club recalled several players from Utica, including Lenni Hämeenaho.

Check out the notebook for the latest info, updates, interviews, videos and more from the practice session!

Luke Who's Back

First on the ice this morning was Devils defenceman Luke Hughes. Hughes has been out of the lineup with a shoulder injury since Jan. 19, when the Devils were on their Western Canada road trip.

Head coach Sheldon Keefe said, before the Olympic break, that Hughes’ recovery and rehab were headed in a positive direction and that he was expected to be close to a return, if not an official return to practice, once the break concluded.

"He looks good," head coach Sheldon Keefe said, "He was able to skate with the group today, more just the skating and passing type of day, so we’ll just have to continue to monitor him and see where he’s at. The hope is that we can ramp up as as we ramp up but encouraging to see him."

Hughes, despite his forward progress, will not be able to return to game action before the Feb. 28 game at St. Louis, as he is on Long Term Injury Reserve, dating back to his injury date.

Mini Camp

With a full week until the club returns to game action, the next few days will be used as a mini-training camp as the team gets their feet back underneath them. It’s been a long break, and everyone was refreshed and excited to be around each other again, and ready to put in the work for the final stretch of the regular season and put themselves in a spot to climb the standings.

“Whether we have our full group or not, we’ve got to maximize every day,” Keefe said. “Today is a day to get the rust off, get back out, get the body feeling good so that you can ramp it up and really start pushing well to come out after the break, so that’s really been my focus, is to have our players and staff ready for our practice sessions here and be ready to take each day as it comes.”

The club will have four more practice days before the season resumes, and are currently missing all their Olympians. At the time of publication, the Devils Swiss contingent, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Jonas Siegenthaler, as well as Slovakia’s Simon Nemec are all through to the semi-finals with Sweden (Jesper Bratt, Jacob Markstrom) going up against the USA and Jack Hughes.

“You’ve got to make sure your conditioning is in the right spot,” Connor Brown said of using the practice time wisely. “Make sure that your skills and touches are there. More than anything it’s fun to be back with the guys, get back with the group and get on the ice together.”

Eventually, the Devils will start to get some of their Olympians back. But in the meantime, Keefe used the break to dig into his team to set them up for the best success to hit the ground running next week.

“For myself, it wasn’t much of a break in terms of time away," Keefe continued. "I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with my wife and kids, but a lot of time on video. It kind of felt in a lot of ways like an off-season in terms of regrouping, diving into what’s gone well, what hasn’t and obviously there’s been too many things that hasn’t gone well. I spent a great deal of time of diagnosing that, working at it, looking at ourselves, the trends around the league and just trying to make some adjustments and have our guys ready to go when the puck drops.”

Recalls

The New Jersey Devils announced this morning that the club has recalled forward Lenni Hämmenaho and defensemen Dennis Cholowski and Colton White from Utica (AHL).

The club has also recalled goaltender Jakub Malek from Utica as a Practice Goaltender per NHL Olympic regulations.