About an hour after the New Jersey Devils won the No. 1 slot in the 2017 Draft Lottery, then-GM Ray Shero sat at a table with a couple of fellow GMs and a reporter at a Toronto watering hole. He wrote a name on a piece of paper.
"That's who we're taking," he said wryly.
Turns out Shero was toying with us.
He was mirroring a scene from the 2014 movie Draft Day when the Cleveland Browns GM, played by Kevin Costner, wrote the name of the player he was going to take prior to the NFL Draft.
Linebacker Vonte Mack. The same name Shero wrote down.
Shero had a good chuckle at our expense. He pulled the same thing on Devils staff as the draft approached. In reality, he was quite secretive about who his choice would be.
In the end, the Devils took center Nico Hischier. The Philadelphia Flyers selected forward Nolan Patrick No. 2; the Dallas Stars picked defenseman Miro Heiskanen third; and the Colorado Avalanche eagerly snapped up defenseman Cale Makar fourth.
The Devils took some heat for the selection, especially for passing on Makar who won the Norris Trophy as the top defenseman in the NHL and Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season.
New Jersey's patience with Hischier's development is paying dividends. The 23-year-old is the Devils captain and enjoying a breakout season with 19 points (nine goals, 10 assists) in 17 games.
New Jersey has won 12 consecutive games and can tie the franchise record, set in 2001, against the Oilers on Monday (7 p.m. ET; MSGSN, SNOL, ESPN+, SN NOW).
"Hindsight's 50-50 right? Everybody's right when they go back," Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald said. "You hear people all the time say 'Oh, we'd have taken Makar.' Well, at the time we wanted to build our team from the center position. A couple of years later we were fortunate to get the first overall pick again and took Jack Hughes. Now we are happy where we are up the middle. It was like when I was in the Pittsburgh Penguins front office in 2007 and we inherited Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
"We always knew Nico had offensive ability. But it's his caring and effort to be a 200-foot centerman that separates him. He's going to win a Selke Trophy one day as the League's top defensive forward."
Fitzgerald, the Devils assistant GM when Hischier was selected, was promoted when Shero was fired Jan. 12, 2020. Now, almost three years later, Shero's bet on Hischier, his version of Vonte Mack, is paying off.