BORN IN THE U.S. EH
From its outdoor skating rinks to his beloved Maple Leafs, Toronto made a lasting impact on American-born phenom Jack Hughes. We hang out with the teenager destined to be the first-overall pick in the 2019 NHL draft
PLYMOUTH, Mich.— It was like watching a magician pull a quarter from behind someone’s ear. After the fact, you could piece together what had happened, but in the moment, everyone was fooled, most notably the three dizzied Dubuque defenders.
The ever-evolving magic show of 17-year-old Jack Hughes, the consensus No. 1 pick in the 2019 NHL draft in Vancouver this June, was in fine form on a recent Sunday afternoon inside the USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Mich., on the outskirts of Detroit.
Hughes’ USA Hockey National Team Development Program under-18 squad was leading comfortably early into the third period of a United States Hockey League contest against the Fighting Saints — a team comprised of mostly 19- and 20-year-olds — when the top prospect pulled this particular rabbit from his hat.
The play began when Hughes intercepted a haphazard clearing attempt. He then went to work, first cutting ever-so slightly to his left to find a seam — or, rather, create a seam — between a pair of helpless Dubuque players at their own blue line. Hughes coolly gained the zone and outsmarted one more opposing player before sliding a precise pass to teammate Cole Caufield, who easily cashed in. At this point, the team’s play-by-play man proclaimed, “He made that look almost too easy.”
The announcer was referencing the goal-scorer, but he could also have been talking about Hughes, the team captain and best player on the ice this day by a country mile.
“He created a 2-on-1 out of a 3-on-2 for them,” said Caufield, himself a projected first-rounder in what is an American-heavy 2019 draft class. “When you’re playing with him, you’ve got to expect the unexpected and you have to trust him. You kind of know he’s going to make the right play.”
Hughes’ U-18 coach at the USNTDP, John Wroblewski, recalled similar wizardry from his star centre earlier this season against Dartmouth College. That day, the magic started with an opposing defender having a “clear-cut, 99% chance” at exiting the zone with the puck, before Hughes stripped him of it, found Caufield, and Dartmouth yanked its net off the moorings to prevent a goal.
“You watch it on tape and you’re just, ‘Oh my god.’ That is, I think, his defining quality: When he’s on ... when he’s buzzing, you’d better have eyes in the back of your head, because he is going to hunt you right down and that puck is going the other way as soon as he gets on top of you.”
It’s all to say, the #LoseForHughes social media hashtag has wide circulation for a reason: Jack Hughes could be worth tanking for.
As a frame of reference, consider that in early March he broke the NTDP’s season scoring record for a player in his under-17 season (87 points in 46 games), averaging 1.92 points through 51 games and surpassing the point-per-game marks of the Leafs’ Auston Matthews (1.13) and Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane (1.11), the last two Americans selected first overall in the same age category. As a 16-year-old facing teams made up mostly of 18- to 20-year-olds, Hughes registered 116 points in 60 games, which is one point shy of the program record set by Matthews, who was a year older than Hughes at the time.
While he might not be mentioned in the same breath as generational talents such as Connor McDavid or Matthews — only time will complete that story — Hughes is viewed as a genuine No. 1 pick, the type of franchise-player-in-themaking an NHL team builds around.
Though he’s a centre, the 5-foot-10, 168-pound Hughes has regularly been compared to similar-in-stature Kane (his childhood idol), with emphasis on his grade-A skating ability, high-end hockey IQ, puck skills and that previously mentioned knack for creating offence out of thin air.
Yes, it’s early days. There’s a pile of hockey to be played between now and June, including the world junior championship beginning Boxing Day, where draft positioning can shift greatly based on performance. (The hype train will surely roar off its tracks in Vancouver and Victoria, where Hughes and his older brother, Quinn, a Michigan Wolverines defenceman and NTDP graduate selected seventh overall by the Vancouver Canucks last summer, are expected to don stars and stripes jerseys together.)
Still, there is little to debate about whose name will be called first by a smiling NHL general manager eight months from now. As one Eastern Conference scout told the Sun: “If you look at first-overall picks as a whole, he certainly fits that criteria.
He’s certainly a dynamic talent. There’s a good group that could push him, but it’s Jack’s to lose right now.”
Hughes wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Any time you dream of something like that, you’re not dreaming to be the second or third pick overall,” said Hughes, who is chased only by Finnish forward Kaapo Kakko in the race for first overall. “You always want to be No. 1, the best. It’s really important to me.”
If all goes to plan, Hughes, will land in the NHL next year as an 18-year-old, and give new hope to a downtrodden organization while realizing a lifelong dream, one that took root for the American in the selfproclaimed centre of the hockey universe.
TORONTO, THE GOOD
There was little Jack Hughes, four years old, skating on a frozen baseball field in plain view from the classroom window in Mississauga. Inside the school, staring out at Jack and his dad Jim, was older brother Quinn, who might as well have been in jail.
The Hughes family home rang.
“Can you please not go out there? It’s really distracting. All he wants to do is watch you guys,” their mother, Ellen, recalls a school official pleading with her.
The family hatched an easy solution. They told Quinn that he, too, could skate outside, over the lunch hour, if he stopped looking out the window during class. Quinn would wolf down his sandwich in the bitter cold while his mom or dad tied his skate laces and he’d go for a scoot with younger brother Jack each noon hour.
The Hughes family has always had an almost religious devotion to the frozen game, forever seeking out competition of the highest order. And the GTA — most notably the city-run outdoor rinks — holds a special place in their hearts. After all, it’s where the three Hughes boys — Quinn, now 19, Jack, now 17, and Luke, now 15 — grew their unbridled passion for the sport.
That isn’t to suggest it wasn’t a hockey household from an earlier time. Jim was a star defenceman at Providence College before embarking on a coaching career that included an early stop in Orlando, Fla., where Jack and Quinn were born, and continued on to Boston where he served as a Bruins assistant. It’s in Beantown where Ellen — a three-sport athlete at the University of New Hampshire and a member of Team USA’s world women’s hockey championship entry in 1992 — said she really began to notice their boys’ hockey interests evolve.
But when Jim took a job as an assistant with the AHL’s Marlies and moved the family to Canada’s most populated city, this hockeyloving family gained a new level of access to the sport. When they weren’t playing for the city’s top youth hockey teams, including the Mississauga Rebels and Toronto Marlboros, the boys spent every minute of their free time either on the outdoor rink at Wedgewood Park in Etobicoke, or touring around to watch the Leafs, Marlies or Ontario Hockey League games.
They were living and breathing hockey 24/7, in a hockey-mad metropolis that encouraged it.
“When we first moved to Canada, the first thing that was apparent to us was that hockey was in the culture, the society,” Jim Hughes said. “Everywhere you looked, kids were wearing jerseys to school. Just from a cultural standpoint ... it’s on the radio, it’s on TV, it’s multiple games, it’s everywhere you look, hockey. It was just a fantastic place for the kids to grow up and really grow their passion.”
It only intensified when Jim became head of player development with the Maple Leafs (after spending 11 years with the organization, he now works for player agent Pat Brisson at CAA).
Jim recalled sneaking young Jack up to the ACC press box for a Leafs game shortly after being hired during the John Ferguson Jr. era. Healthy scratch Carlo Colaiacovo was sitting next to him, and broadcaster Dick Irvin was sitting next to Jack.
“I said to Jack, ‘Don’t move. Here’s your popcorn,’ ” Jim said with a chuckle.
With tickets being sparse, expensive and usually both — even for Leafs staffers — Ellen would often drop her boys and some of their friends off at the gates, sending them on their way with standing-room ducats.
“It was sick,” Jack, a selfproclaimed die-hard Leafs fan, said of his time spent watching games from up near the rafters inside the ACC, noting he and his young friends would politely decline offers of beer from the boozehounds who dominate those quarters.
“The atmosphere was unbelievable. If you go to any sporting event, you’ll know that the die-hards are in the second section, standingroom only. It was pretty rowdy up there.”
Indeed, growing up in the Hughes household, it was all Leafs, all the time. Jim’s job with the club provided his young boys a unique glimpse into the lives of big-leaguers.
The family housed players, including forward William Nylander upon his arrival in
Toronto, and spent countless Saturday nights playing shinny up at former captain Wendel Clark’s property north of the city “We’d be up at Wendel’s barn and Wendel would be like, ‘That’s it, if you guys don’t get off the ice right now I’m shutting off the lights and you’re sleeping in (the barn) for the night. It would be like midnight or one in the morning,” recalled Ellen. “(Wendel would) strap on the pads. And no helmet.”
Jack has met Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby — another of his childhood idols — on a few occasions, and this past summer skated alongside NHLers such as Jason Spezza, Taylor Hall and John Tavares.
For Jim, there is no doubt that Toronto is where his boys fell in love with the sport.
HOCKEYTOWN, USA
If Toronto provided the memories, Michigan provided the springboard.
While Jack continues to hone his craft with the NTDP, older brother Quinn, a Canucks defence prospect, is starring with the Michigan Wolverines down the road in Ann Arbor, while 15-year-old Luke plays minor midget with the Detroit Little Caesars team.
Luke, the youngest Hughes brother, appears positioned to follow in his siblings’ footsteps and join the top American junior-aged development program next season. If he were to find his way into the first round of the 2022 NHL draft, they would become the first three American brothers drafted in the first round.
Alex Turcotte, a fellow projected first-rounder and NTDP teammate, rooms with Jack and his parents in Plymouth, while San Jose Sharks first-round pick and Ottawa Senators property Josh Norris lives with Quinn in Ann Arbor. It’s a family affair at the rinks in Detroit, Plymouth and Ann Arbor, with the players often dropping in to watch their siblings’ games with mom and dad.
“It was kind of logical,” Jim said of the move across the border.
“It’s just another great hockey hub,” Ellen added, “It’s been a really great transition.”
As for life away from the rink for the busy, high-profile hockey family, Jim and Ellen say they try to put the emphasis on all things unrelated to hockey at the end of each day.
But “we don’t succeed,” Ellen said with a laugh.
‘HE’S A KILLER’
If there’s one thing instantly noticeable when watching Jack Hughes in a game — aside from his almost comically effortless skating stride — it’s his sense of urgency. He wants to be on the ice, he wants the puck, he wants to make a play, he wants to score, and he wants it all five minutes ago.
It was no different this day at USA Hockey Arena. The puck was dropped to signal the start of the Sunday-afternoon game against the visiting Fighting Saints. The first shift had passed, then the second and the third. Hughes, straddled one leg over the boards at his bench, clearly anxious as he awaited his first assignment.
When he finally got the tap on the shoulder from coach Wroblewski, Hughes was not initially feeling it. A giveaway while attempting to carry the puck from behind his own net preceded a fruitless power play quarterbacked by the doubleshifted Hughes, who, upon arrival back at the bench, kicked his skate against the boards — an early, if not rare, sign of frustration by the player wearing No. 6.
But as anyone who has followed Hughes’ young career knows, he is virtually unstoppable. It’s not a matter of if he’ll strike, but when.
Early in the second period, Hughes threw a seeing-eye wrister through heavy traffic for a power-play goal, igniting what wound up being a twopoint outing and what his coach said afterward was perhaps Hughes’ best overall game this season.
“You might be able to shut him down for a period, but when he plays that way and sticks to it and just says, ‘I’m not going to get denied,’ there’s not a league that can stop him,” Wroblewski said.
“The game is more fun when you have the puck on your stick. I love to get on the ice, I’ll tell you that. It excites me. I just love to be out there competing and making plays out there. That’s kind of what puts a smile on my face,” said Hughes.
Scott Monaghan, the NTDP’s senior director of
operations who has been with the program since its formation more than 20 years ago, can only recall being similarly impressed by two other players at first sight: Forward Phil Kessel (fifth overall, Boston, 2006) and defenceman Seth Jones (fourth overall, Nashville, 2013).
“He’s a killer. He wants to be in the game. He wants to score. He wants to win more than anything,” said Monaghan, who served as general manager for Team USA at the under-18 world championship in Russia last winter, where Hughes was named tournament MVP. “You watch him, he just flows. He glides and he can shift gears to faster and then you put the stick skills and the vision together with that.
“There he is, he’s back on the ice and you’re just following him for the whole shift until he goes back on the bench,” Monaghan added. “Even if he disappears somewhere for a minute, he pops right back up and he’s got the puck again. The puck gravitates to him. And he knows how to play in the big trees.”
Coach Wroblewski was equally blown away he first saw Hughes on the ice two years ago. “It was tremendous to watch him with a group of kids that were two years older than him, how he could still just dominate the surface,” Wroblewski said. “He was still very small and slight back then. But he had this ability to navigate through traffic. How he could kind of freeze the opposition even though it’s guys that are two years older than him and much more mature in regards to their defensive habits.
“He could still freeze them up and open up his teammates.”
It all has scouts high on Hughes, the Florida-born, Toronto-raised, Michiganbased NHL superstar-inwaiting ahead of what appears to be a particularly strong draft class for American and Western Hockey League players. There were dozens of talent evaluators on hand for the recent Sunday game in Plymouth, including Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland, whose team could be in the thick of the draft lottery proceedings by season’s end.
“He’s got great ability with the puck, just to kind of create offence from so many different ways; using his skill, using his speed, using his sense,” said the Eastern Conference scout, noting Hughes tends to try to do a bit too much by himself at times, but that shouldn’t be viewed with concern for possible suitors.
“World juniors will be big. (It’s a chance to) see some of those players, how they adjust at that level,” the scout added.
“That’s a great marker for us. You really see how they stack up to not just this group of players, but past firstrounders.”
NO PRESSURE
How has Hughes handled the pressure that comes with being the expected No. 1 overall pick?
By all accounts, with ease. Hughes has managed to maintain an excellent pace thus far. He enters the month of December leading his team in points (nine goals and 43 points through 22 games), while also thriving against college opponents, including a three-point game against the Michigan Wolverines which saw him face off against brother Quinn for the first time. Hughes recently led all players at the Five Nations tourney in the Czech Republic with six goals and 16 points in four games as the U.S. 2001birth year group moved its undefeated streak on international ice to 18 games dating back to October 2017.
If he is feeling any heat, the forward isn’t letting on.
“There’s a lot of scouts and a lot of eyes on us every day, every game we have ... and I think he has the most pressure on him, obviously,” his teammate Caufield said.
“He doesn’t let that affect him at all. He’s not too worried about anything like that right now. He just goes day by day and it’s really cool to see him not get too anxious about anything and just take every day as one at a time and go from there.”
Hughes said it has never been in his nature to be easily distracted by any outside forces — something he says he learned at an early age while starring in minor hockey in the “crazy hockey market” of Toronto.
He also leans on his dad’s advice to “just keep your feet on the ground” and stay in the moment, while benefiting from seeing first-hand all that was involved when his brother went through the draft process last year.
“Of course it’s a big year. It’s kind of just one step closer to the ultimate dream, to play in the NHL,” Hughes said. “But for me, I’m kind of just taking it day by day and trying to enjoy it and trying to get better here at the NTDP. Honestly, I don’t really feel any pressure. I feel like I just want to do great and I know I’ll do great, so I just continue to come here and have fun.”
As to which teams might be in the hunt for Hughes, it’s safe to say it won’t be his beloved Maple Leafs. At the end of the day, Hughes will be content with an opportunity to take the next big step toward his dream.
“I know there’s a lot out there other than just hockey. Hockey is just a small thing in a big world,” he said. “But it’s so important in my life. I spend so much time thinking about it. I have such a love for it. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
You might be able to shut him down for a period, but when he plays that way and sticks to it and just says, ‘I’m not going to get denied,’ there’s not a league that can stop him. USNTDP U-18 coach John Wroblewski raves about Jack Hughes