Following a tough loss in Carolina, the New Jersey Devils flew back home to face the Chicago Blackhawks less than 24 hours later.

The final score of 5-3 doesn’t do the game justice; in one of their most dominant offensive efforts of the season, a lack of finishing only made it a Devils win. Based on the constant chances they created, it should’ve been a blowout.

Goaltender Jake Allen has been rock solid for the majority of the 2025-26 campaign. The Blackhawks got out to a quick 1-0 lead after a strange bounce led to Allen leaving the net wide open.

He could have easily let that get to him, but instead he buckled down and stopped 26 of his next 28 shots, including a few key high danger saves towards the end. One of those goals against was a perfectly executed 5-on-3: unstoppable by any netminder.

Between the tough performance and subsequent booing in early January, plus an injury, it feels like a lot of people have been waiting for Luke Hughes to find his stride — both this season and moving forward. Just due to the last name and contract alone, the expectations will always be higher for him.

Even if the scoresheet doesn’t show it, the process has been getting better for Luke for a while now. Tonight, with him on the ice, the Devils out chanced Chicago 27-9, including 17-2 (!!) in the high danger category.

The Devils’ top line of Jesper Bratt, Jack and Connor Brown has been dynamite in the last nine games — they’re 6-3-0 in that span. Combined, they have 40 points in those nine games. Jack, specifically, has been on a different planet after he scored the Golden Goal.

With four points tonight, Jack recorded his eighth multi-point effort in his last 13 games; he has 24 points in that span, a 151-point pace over a full season.

In their games together as a line, both Brown (9P in 9 GP) and Bratt (13P in 9 GP) are playing to very high point paces as well. Tonight, that line generated ~2.20 expected goals, while the Blackhawks generated just ~0.35 in those shifts. That’s an 86.2% share of the on-ice expected goals; in other words, complete dominance.

Jack is up to 414 points in 420 career games. While there’s only nine games remaining, there’s now a real possibility that he can become a career point-per-game player by season’s end.