Jack Update, More from Monday's Practice | NOTEBOOK

The Devils are practicing Monday afternoon at RWJBarnabas Health Hockey House inside Prudential Center before heading to Ottawa to face the Senators Tuesday night.

Stay tuned to the notebook for the latest info, updates, interviews, videos and more from the practice session!

Practice Info

The Devils are missing some players from practice. Captain Nico Hischier has been given a rest day and is not skating. Forwards Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt are taking maintenance days and are also not on the ice.

“Bratt and Meier both needed the day today and we’ll see how they are the rest of the day and into tomorrow,” head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We made the decision to give Nico a rest. Nico is good to go; we’ll just have to see how the other guys are tomorrow.”

Jack Update

Keefe provided the following update on Jack Hughes when asked:

“He’s been skating now for about a week or so," Keefe said. "No stick or puck at this point. He’s been on the ice. He was out there again today. He’s on schedule but he’s far enough away that they don’t even tell how he’s doing. I just know because I know what he’s up to.”

Emphasis

The Devils had a few points of emphasis at today’s practice. Including generating more of a net-front presence.

Part of establishing a net-front presence is breaking through the oppositions layer of bodies. And once you break through that layer, it takes proper body position against the opposition to plant yourself in the area.

“First, you have to have the intent to get there,” Keefe said. “You have to fight through box outs. It’s difficult to do that and you have to be able to do so.”

“Guys that are 6-foot-5 trying to take your head off. It’s hard to get to the net,” forward Stefan Noesen said. “You pay a price to get to the net. It’s part of the game.”

But having a solid net-front isn’t merely just putting your body at the crease and taking a beating. There are smarter ways to do it. And that includes making your net-front arrivals coinciding with the puck coming on net.

“Some of it is the quickness of getting there at the right time and the puck arriving at the right time, as you see with the goal (Timo Meier) scored (at Boston),” Keefe said. “It’s a good indication of what you’re trying to do in a situation like that.”

“It’s things on us and timing and trusting your guys to shoot the puck there,” Noesen said. “Making sure you meet the puck as it gets there. That gets lost in translation sometimes. Which is going to happen. Sometimes you try to make the perfect play and sometimes the perfect play is shoot the puck. You saw a lot of that today at practice and it’s something we’re emphasizing.”

Trust the Process

Despite currently in a four-game losing streak, the Devils are trying to keep the bigger picture in mind. After all, the team had an eight-game winning streak earlier in the year, and there are many ebbs and flows to a full season.

“What we’re going through throughout the whole course of a year, all the injuries and ups and downs,” Noesen said. “We started on a high. We’re at the lower end right now. It’s an 82-game season. We have to stay as even keeled as much as you can.”

Part of keeping loose is trusting the process and sticking to the game plan even as things get hectic.

“The process is the most important thing,” Noesen said. “We have a good coach here. We build the process together. It doesn’t matter what happens. The next game you’ll go out there and do the same thing over and over and over again. Results are the results. There are things that happen in a game that you can’t control. There’s things that you can. Something is going to happen, it’ll go off a skate, it’ll go in the net, vice versa. It’s the inevitable of the situations that happen.”

“Build off what we can,” forward Dawson Mercer said. “You can’t change what happened. We just want to make sure we turn that into a positive in some way and we want to make sure we get ourselves back to where we were. It’s a long year. In the overall picture it’s a short stretch. We can make a big difference in the coming weeks. That’s what we’re focused on. Just building off of everything else.”

He Said It:

Keefe on the Quinn Hughes trade rumors: "We don’t talk about that sort of stuff. That’s very much out of our control as coaches and players. Stuff that goes on in the periphery is just that, noise at this point. Now more than ever we need to stay focused."