Hughes expected to be top pick
He would be the fifth No. 1 selection to come from USA Hockey
PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Jack Hughes draws a crowd.
Detroit general manager Ken Holland and former Red Wing star Steve Yzerman chatted during the first intermission of one of Hughes’ recent games. Scouts from the NHL were scattered throughout USA Hockey Arena that night, taking notes for teams paying them to evaluate the world’s best hockey players.
Hughes, a 17-year-old center, will likely be the top pick in the NHL draft in June.
USA Hockey has developed the nation’s top players for more than two-plus decades and four of them have been selected No. 1 overall — including Auston Matthews and Patrick Kane — from its National Team Development Program. Hughes is expected to be next.
“He’s as good as I’ve seen come through here in terms of talent, work ethic and being the complete package on and off the ice,” said senior director of operations Scott Monaghan, who has been with the program since its inception in 1996. “He’s more like Patrick because of his skating and shiftiness than Auston, who was really big and strong.
“We have 30 to 40 scouts at most of our home games and as many as 60 because Jack is on a team with as many as six, seven or eight firstround picks.”
Hughes chose to surround himself with the best American hockey players his age as an amateur instead of getting paid as the No. 1 pick in the Ontario Hockey League. He also could have graduated high school a year early to play with his brother, Quinn, a freshman at Michigan and a defenseman drafted No. 7 overall last summer by the Vancouver Canucks.
“I feel like it’s the best place to be for a 16-year, 17-year-old,” Hughes told The Associated Press. “No one trains as hard as us. We skate every day. We lift three days a week. We play a great schedule. I think it’s the best place to be to groom yourself to be an NHL player someday.”
Hughes was born in Orlando, Fla., where his father, Jim, was assistant coach for the Solar Bears in the International Hockey League. Jim Hughes moved his family a few months later to Boston because he got a job as an assistant with the Bruins. Two years later, the former Providence defenseman went to New Hampshire to be an assistant and later head coach with the Manchester Monarchs in the American Hockey League.
Jim Hughes’ next job appears to have been pivotal in the development of his sons’ hockey careers because it landed him in Toronto as an assistant with the AHL’s Marlies.
“I always played him a year up and that’s not easy to do in the hockey mecca of the world,” Jim Hughes said. “Even when he was 5, you could see he had a special skill-set. As he got older, coaches were yelling at their players to hit him and teams were trying to attack him. And quite frankly, he was still dominant.”
While Jim Hughes was often busy with his job when the boys were growing up, Ellen Hughes taught her sons how to skate. She drew on her experience from playing for the U.S. women’s national hockey team and at New Hampshire.
“When Jack would go outside to play, older boys would always pick him even though he was at least two years younger than the rest of them and he always wanted the puck,” Ellen Hughes recalled. “We never had to push him. It was always organic and Toronto was just the best place for him to prepare him for what he’s doing now.”
Wednesday night
OILERS 3, BLUES 2, SO: In St. Louis, Connor McDavid scored in the shootout after Oscar Klefbom tied the game it late in the third period as Edmonton squeezed past St. Louis.
Klefbom scored with 55.2 seconds remaining to tie the game at 2, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and McDavid scored in the shootout.
Nugent-Hopkins also scored in the second period as Edmonton won for the fourth time in five games.
Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot made 28 saves, plus two more in the shootout to win for the first time in seven tries dating to Oct. 28.