NEWARK — Nico Hischier had to learn to cook his own meals and fill out a rental application.

Taylor Hall had to learn how to do his own laundry, pay his own bills, register his car and figure out where he was and wasn’t allowed to park.

Sami Vatanen had a tougher time with that last one as a young player, though he was a few years older than Hall at the time.

Life in the NHL at 18 years old can feel a little out of sorts. While you might legally be an adult and you’re getting crushed by them on the boards every night, you still don’t quite feel like one. Often times, players are living with billet families up to about age 20, so being thrown into the NHL as a young adult takes some maturation and it requires some navigation.

“We’re basically college freshmen at that point,” Hall said. “We’re college freshmen without a dorm, without a food plan.”

Jack Hughes is plenty independent already. The 18-year-old center is well-traveled, he knows what it’s like to be in the spotlight and play on big stages. But the top draft pick is not exactly familiar with New Jersey or the rigors of life in the NHL, so until he gets adjusted, he’s living with veteran goalie Cory Schneider.

This isn’t new for Schneider and his wife, Jill, since the couple had Jill’s nephew living with them recently. But it’s a pretty full house between their two kids, two cats, one dog, and now Hughes.

“The first question I asked him was, ‘Are you allergic to animals?’” Schneider said. “He said no, thankfully. That would have been a big hiccup.”

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Schneider has long joked that he’s ranked last in terms of the household hierarchy. He knew when he married Jill he would always come after her 15-year-old dog Bella, since Bella was there long before him. He ranks himself somewhere below the kids and Bella, but maybe ahead of the two cats, George Michael and Tuna, who was born Luna, but the Schneiders later discovered she was not a she and decided to rename him.

Hughes is wherever he wants to be on that hierarchy. Although he’s been carpooling with Schneider to the arena every day during training camp, he’ll soon have his own car in New Jersey, and the family wants him to come and go as he pleases.

“He's an 18-year-old man, he can do whatever the heck he wants,” Schneider said. “We try to cook dinners every night but with kids sometimes you're able to sit down together, and sometimes you're not. So it's more or less, you know, and you'll get something going and she'll say dinner's ready for whoever's ready to eat it. Sometimes that means we all eat together.”

It was the family meals that were key for a prospect Devils’ legend Scott Niedermayer helped develop. The Hall-of-Fame defenseman hosted Cam Fowler when the Ducks’ defenseman entered the league at 18. Much like Hughes, Fowler became close to the Niedermayer kids. It was important for him to feel like he had a home as a teenager in the NHL.

“Just kind of having a family environment was tremendous for me and I’m very thankful for Scotty and his family for doing that,” Fowler said. “It made the transition to the season and the grind a lot easier on me.”

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Hall opted to live with teammate Jordan Eberle his first season in Edmonton, though he says if he had to do it over again he might live with a veteran.

“I had never done laundry before, I had never paid rent, I had to learn how to do everything,” Hall said. “Parking situation, license plate, get my license, all that. But you grow up fast, and certainly I think it would have been nice for me maybe to live with an older guy, but it worked out.”

For the Europeans and Russians, it’s their older countrymates who help them out early in their careers. Vatanen came up with Fowler in the Anaheim system and had fellow Finns Teemu Selanne and Saku Koivu looking out for him. Selanne even loaned him a car because that’s what Jari Kurri did for him, which helped Vatanen learn that important lesson about parking that Hall had to learn: Always check the signs.

Selanne’s Mercedes was towed when Vatanen accidentally parked it in a guest spot.

But like Vatanen, Devils’ rookie Jesper Boqvist has another Swede helping him get acclimated. His former national teammate Jesper Bratt is letting him move in with him, and it’s strange for Bratt to think about being the older teammate tasked with guiding a younger one since it was only two years ago he and Hischier were the kids on the team, entering the league at 18 and 19.

The club wanted its No. 1 overall pick to be as comfortable as possible and it knew the Swiss native was reticent to use his broken English in 2017. It had greatly improved after spending a year with a billet family in Halifax during his stint in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, but it wasn't where he wanted it to be.

New Jersey management didn’t want to overwhelm Hischier, so they had him live in the same building as Swiss defenseman Mirco Mueller. Hischier had played on the national team with Mueller’s brother, Alina, and the Devils were banking on that familial connection to help ease Hischier’s transition.

“I wasn’t really that comfortable with my English my first year, and he speaks the same language as me,” Hischier said. “If I didn’t understand what the dress code was, he would help me out. He helped me find a place, with all of the paperwork and all of that, he helped me out a lot.”

It was the right move for a mature person like Hischier, who didn’t need anyone to hold his hand but just needed a sense of community.

“I wasn’t really struggling with it,” Hischier said. “I’m a person who can adjust really quick so it was just nice to have Mirco and some other younger guys, like Bratt was a younger guy as well. It was his first time living alone too, so we helped each other a lot.”

It’s freeing to go from your parents’ house to your own for the first time as a college student or a young professional, but going into the NHL before you can legally have a drink in most NHL cities can seem like your life is being fast-forwarded. There is pressure to perform and an expectation of professional conduct for kids who don’t even know what that entails.

It's no surprise that so few players are capable or ready to make an impact in the NHL at 18 or 19. Being on your own for the first time while also playing hockey at the highest level, under a microscope, isn't easy. The league might be getting younger, but these lessons aren't getting any easier.

It’s an education unlike any other in life or in sports, and the Devils, with three No. 1 picks and plenty of teenagers in their locker room, are teaching a master class.

“You grow up fast when you’re living on your own in the NHL,” Hall said.