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Devils fans litter ice again … this time with hats for Hughes – Trentonian

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NEWARK – Only a few days after the New Jersey Devils fanbase drew national attention for littering the ice with various debris at the Prudential Center after a series of calls didn’t go their team’s way, they were at it again.

At the 9:51 mark of the third period on Saturday night, it happened again.

Hats.

Everywhere.

It was a celebration this time, one for budding superstar forward Jack Hughes, who finished up his first career hat trick late in the team’s 5-1 win over the Washington Capitals, a victory that also gave suddenly beloved Lindy Ruff his 800th win in the National Hockey League as a head coach.

He’s now one of just five coaches in league history to reach the milestone, joining Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville, Barry Trotz and Ken Hitchcock.

“It means I’ve been around a long time,” Ruff cracked to reporters in attendance at the post-game press conference.

“It’s great to win the game.  You’ve got to do a lot of right things, you’ve got to have good teams.  The way our team is playing, I’ve got to give them credit for getting me there…obviously, I’ve got a lot of respect for all of those (other coaches with 800 wins). It puts me in a good group.  I’ve learned a lot from the coaches around me, and I obviously played for Scotty Bowman.  I have a lot of respect for him, still communicate with him on occasion. The other guys are great coaches.  But, the reason you get there is you found a way to adapt through the years and get to that point.”

As for Hughes, he’s adapted his game after a slow start to his career to ultimately start to become what many expected him to be when the franchise took him with the first overall pick back in 2019.  After just 18 goals in his first 117 games over his first two seasons, he’s tallied 37 in his last 71 since the beginning of last year, including Saturday night’s natural hat trick.

“It’s exciting,” Hughes told reporters after the game.  “Couple of two-goal games in my career, so it’s nice to cap it off with the third one…you want to continue to play the right way, but if an opportunity comes, you want to put it in the back of the net with authority.  So, I was able to cap it off, and it’s nice.”

***

You would have thought you were in the losing locker room.

And for the first two periods and more, it seemed like a trip to the visitor’s quarters at Madison Square Garden was going to be guaranteed for just that, as the New York Rangers had thoroughly dominated the Edmonton Oilers for the first 40 minutes of the game, taking a 3-0 lead into the second intermission.

But, two straight goals from defenseman Evan Bouchard cut the Rangers lead to one, Dylan Holloway’s first career NHL goal tied it at 3-3 with under ten minutes to play, and Leon Draisaitl’s late power play goal stunned the matinee crowd with just 2:02 left in regulation, as it was the difference in Edmonton coming all the way back for a 4-3 win.

It was a matchup of reigning conference finalists, both of whom ultimately lost out on a chance to play for the Stanley Cup last year.  With that said, Draisaitl knows the window to take that next step is still open, and was visibly frustrated at times despite ultimately getting a positive result.

“It was a weird game, I didn’t think we played that bad, but it obviously wasn’t the sharpest with a couple individual mistakes, and you find yourself down 3-0 again,” he said.

“Big character win, but we’ve got to learn from our mistakes.  We’ve got to learn quick, too.  We can’t be down 3-0 every single game, it’s too exhausting on players.  You’ve got to shorten the bench.  But, it was a really, really big win for us and we’ve got to build off of that…there’s always things to work on.  It’s just a couple minor mistakes that ended up in the back of our net that need to be cleaned up.  Other than that, we’ll take a character win.”



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