Jack Hughes’ NHL debut was like a raucous party that ended with the cops knocking on the door, confiscating all the booze and telling everyone to go home. Man, it was fun for a while at the Prudential Center, wasn’t it?

Then, well, not so much.

What didn’t happen on Friday night? The Devils lost in a shootout to the Winnipeg Jets, a team that looked like it had left its legs in Manitoba until rallying for what felt like a miraculous comeback, and you almost hoped someone pulled the 18-year-old Devils phenom aside and whispered this valuable piece of information in his ear:

“Don’t worry, kid. They’re not all like this.”

Hughes won’t soon forget this one. He went from hearing the loudest ovation during pregame introductions, to getting stuck on the ice as the Devils gave up the goal that erased a 4-0 lead, to having his coach anchor him to the bench for a crucial seven-minute stretch to end the third period.

This was a wildly entertaining start to the 2019-2020 hockey season, but one that no one in red and black could enjoy given the sad-trombone ending. That included Hughes. As he stood in front of his locker, his hair still drenched with sweat, the No. 1 draft pick looked and sounded like he was just grateful the whole thing was over.

“It was nice to just play my first game, to be at peace with it and say, ‘I’m here. Now I can buckle in and start playing,’” Hughes said.

He had to start somewhere, and to be fair, it would have taken a hat trick or a game winner to live up to his outsized expectations. The excitement for his debut had been building from the moment the Devils won the draft lottery this spring, and maybe opening night is a good reminder for the 81 games that will follow.

Hughes is going to be a star. But, for now, he is also a rookie. He is going to experience growing pains as he makes the massive step up to NHL competition, and despite all of the fanfare about the Devils offseason, so is the cast of players around him.

The Devils looked like a juggernaut through the first period and a half. Blake Coleman scored an impossible one-handed goal that you have to see to believe. PK Subban had a crushing open-ice hit that revved up the crowd in the first period and an assist. Chants of “Gooose!" filled the Rock after another newcomer, Nikita Gusev, buried an early goal.

The crowd couldn’t get enough. Then, after the Jets cut the lead in half, goalie Cory Schneider left the ice in the second period with cramps. The Devils were never the same, a reminder that no matter how many splashy moves a team makes, hockey is still always about the man between the pipes.

“It just snowballed,” said Taylor Hall, the only league MVP in franchise history. “We’re a team that has a lot of new faces. Sometimes, when that’s the case, you don’t have the cohesion that you’d like.”

No one should read much of anything into October results. This is a team that charged out to a 4-0 start last season, only to limp through a 27-41-10 record the rest of the way. That awful finish, given the lucky draw in the lottery, was a blessing.

This team, of course, is not that team. It was striking just how much new talent the Devils sent out onto the ice on Friday, from Gusev, to Subban, to Wayne Simmonds, and yes, to Hughes. The Devils have higher expectations for a reason -- they’re just flat-out better.

“We have much better players than we had in the past,” Hall said bluntly. But when one of those players is barely old enough to have a driver’s license, there are going to be highs and lows. This game had more of the latter, although Hughes was a break or two away from to a couple of goals.

He’ll get his first, soon. Maybe it’ll come on Saturday night in Buffalo. This is the reality of life in the NHL, something the veterans understand too well. A team doesn’t have more than a couple hours to shake off one tough loss before they’re getting ready for another game.

Hughes is entering that grind now. The party ended poorly on Friday night. He’ll be back to work less than 24 hours later. A long season that promises plenty of ups and downs, and career that should captivate fans for decades, are both just beginning.

76 + 86 + 97



Welcome to Jersey pic.twitter.com/ZtcNjI5aPF — New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) October 4, 2019

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.