With Nico Hischier already on the shelf since leaving a game against Buffalo on the 27th last month the Devils could ill afford to lose their Hart candidate as well, but lose Jack Hughes they have, after he took a spill into the boards early in Friday’s game at St. Louis – which proved to be the only loss of three on the trip so far. Hughes’s loss was far bigger than the 4-1 defeat (with two empty-netters adding to the score in a 2-1 game), although somehow it seems we dodged a bullet given the fact a so-called worst case scenario was avoided. Yet, Jack was still described as week to week with analyst Kevin Weekes indicating Jack wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

I mean geez, what kind of injury were they fearing here if being out only a few weeks wasn’t the worst-case scenario?! While I understand the secrecy around NHL injuries on the one hand, it still never fails to drive me crazy, especially if we’re talking about an injury that has to be fully healed before coming back into the lineup anyway. Nico hasn’t even made the road trip but we still don’t know the nature of his injury, whether it’s concussion-related or otherwise. The lack of a timetable given would lead you to assume it’s concussion but again, NHL teams always make fans engage in a parlor guessing game because they want other teams to do so as well. Maybe if there was as much money around gambling NHL games as there is in the NFL or even MLB, there’d be more injury transparency.

Once Hughes went out, my attitude was that it’s time for our role players, defense and goaltending to (in so many words) stop fooling around and shape up. So far it’s mostly been Hughes, Jesper Bratt and an otherworldly power play carrying the Devils during their start as the other aspects of the game have all been very shaky at times. Time to forget wild pond hockey for a while and play with more structure, it’s not sustainable to try to win games 4-3 and 5-4 a la the latter two games of our most recent homestand when you’re missing your top two centers and your fill-in #1 pivot didn’t even have a point in his first ten games of the season.

Fortunately in Chicago, all of that did happen – at least for the most part. The aforementioned new #1 center Mercer did step up with his first goal of the season, while fellow pivot Mike McLeod also added an empty-netter. Our other two goals were scored by Curtis Lazar and Flyers castoff Max Willman in his first game since being called up (who, what?!). Certainly our goaltending also stepped up with Vitek Vanecek putting up one of his better games of the season, making 32 stops and – if you’re an xG believer – stopping more than two goals above expected on the night. Lazar, Willman and Vitek are quite the unlikely trio to make up the three stars but that’s what you got in Chicago last night.

Hopefully Vitek (and Akira Schmid for that matter) can get back to being as consistent as they were last year. Against Buffalo in the Nico injury game, Vitek was actually inconsistent period-to-period as opposed to game to game…allowing clunker goals in the first and third period, making a handful of great saves in the second. Schmid in the meantime was just bad until he also picked it up in St. Louis, only allowing a pair of goals when the Devils’ offense disappeared down the tunnel with Jack on Friday night.

Admittedly I’ve been in and out of watching the Devils (at best) the last week or so, thus I don’t really have much to offer on the last few games apart from the injury concerns and players needing to step up. To this point, you can’t argue with the overall record and getting back-to-back wins against the Wild in an odd home-and-home is certainly commendable. Now more than ever they need to at least find a way to hang around NHL .500 the next few weeks, assuming Jack will be out until at best the end of the month, and Nico is still an unknown timetable himself. It’s nice that we have fewer games this month just as our stars have gone missing, but this upcoming schedule is still a joke. Playing in Colorado tomorrow in the last game of a four-game trip, then going home and playing the Caps Friday…seems normal enough. But then to have the Devils go BACK out West to Winnipeg next Tuesday on a one-game trip before heading back East again?! I mean…is someone just looking to get more frequent flier miles here?!

Hopefully at least one of the walking wounded by the time we’re back East for the foreseeable future next weekend.