The spotlight will be on the Hughes brothers on Tuesday night when the New Jersey Devils, led by Jack and Luke Hughes, open a four-game Western road trip against the Quinn Hughes-led Vancouver Canucks.
It will mark the first time all three Hughes brothers — all top-seven overall draft picks — play in the same NHL game, and just the ninth time in NHL history that three brothers have played in the same game. The most recent regular-season contest featuring three brothers was on April 13, when Florida, with Eric and Marc Staal, played Carolina and Jordan Staal.
Parents Ellen and Jim Hughes plan to be in attendance to watch their three sons, all of whom have been impact performers at the NHL level.
New Jersey center Jack Hughes, 22, the first overall pick of the 2019 NHL Draft, was named the Third Star of the Week on Monday after scoring three goals and compiling seven points in three games last week. Despite missing five games with an upper-body injury, the October First Star of the Month is tied for ninth in assists (21) and 10th in points (30) and leads the league in points per game (1.76).
Canucks captain Quinn Hughes, 24, the seventh overall pick in the 2018 draft, leads all NHL defensemen with nine goals and is tied with Colorado’s Cale Makar for most points by a defenseman (34). And Devils defenseman Luke Hughes, 20, the fourth overall pick in 2021, is second among rookies with 14 points (three goals, 11 assists).
“I definitely didn’t expect something like this to happen when we were kids, but it’s really cool,” Luke Hughes told NHL.com. “That’s the dedication shown by our parents. … how hard they worked and how hard the three of us worked too. It’s going to be fun.”
“Of course, it’s the dream,” Quinn Hughes said of all three playing in the same NHL game. “We probably talked about it as kids playing mini-sticks and stuff but as far as this year, they’re going to want two points, I’m going to want two points and everyone’s worried about their individual game.”
New Jersey, which is seventh in a very tightly packed Metropolitan Division with 23 points, has won three of its past four games but comes in off a surprising 6-3 home loss to San Jose on Friday. It snapped an 0-10-0 road drought for the Sharks.
“If you look at our defensive game, it’s not where we want it to be,” said Devils forward Timo Meier, back after missing seven games with a lower-body injury. “We’ve got to tighten that up as a group and individually we’ve got to look in the mirror and clean some stuff up. We know we have a lot of talent on this team, but talent (alone) is not going to get your far.”
Vancouver entered Monday’s action in second place in the Pacific Division, three points behind defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas. The Canucks will be trying to put together back-to-back wins for the first time since Nov. 12-15, when they won 5-2 at Montreal and 4-3 in overtime against the New York Islanders.
The Canucks come in off a 4-3 victory at Calgary on Saturday. Defenseman Nikita Zadorov, obtained from the Flames on Thursday for a pair of draft picks, assisted on the game-winning goal by Elias Pettersson in his Vancouver debut.
“It feels great,” Zadorov said. “It’s an important win for this team. It’s a big road game. We played a really good hockey team on the road and we stuck with it. All the boys played (hard). … It’s definitely a nice starting point of my career with the Canucks.”
–Field Level Media
