Hughes’ ability to create offense from seemingly impossible positions makes him the heartbeat of New Jersey\u2019s attack. The 25-year-old had 41 points (15 goals, 26 assists) and averaged 21:50 of ice time in 25 games upon his return to the Devils after the Olympics.<\/p>\n
The lingering question has been health. Hughes has played more than 62 regular-season games only once since entering the League in 2019-20. That one season (2022-23) showed what is possible: 99 points (43 goals, 56 assists) in 78 games and a trip to the Eastern Conference Second Round.<\/p>\n
“Health has always been a bit of an issue, and he takes it seriously,” Brodeur said.<\/p>\n
Hughes also appears ready to leave those frustrations behind. He described the Olympic triumph as an emotional conclusion to a difficult stretch in his career.<\/p>\n
“It capped it all off, just the struggle and going through things and all those injuries,” Hughes said. “Now I’m refreshed, I’m happy and I’m not worried about the past. I’m just excited for what’s to come.”<\/p>\n
New Jersey defenseman Luke Hughes<\/a>\u00a0knows exactly what his brother is feeling.<\/p>\n “I think that was kind of a close-the-chapter moment for him,” Luke said of the \u2018Golden Goal.\u2019 “With all the injuries and all the adversity he’s been through over the last couple years, I think that was a really nice way to tie that chapter up. I feel like he’s in a new stage in his career.”<\/p>\n Luke doesn’t believe Olympic glory changed Jack’s personality. He sees it more as validation for someone who has always possessed extraordinary drive.<\/p>\n “He’s always been really hyper-motivated and extremely competitive and the heartbeat of our team,” he said. “He’s the same person he’s always been, and he just keeps getting better every year.”<\/p>\n The Devils also worked to give their star center more support this season. Hughes pointed to additions such as forwards Evan Rodrigues<\/a>, Luke Evangelista<\/a> and Anthony Mantha<\/a>\u00a0as reasons New Jersey could possess its deepest forward group in several years.<\/p>\n Brodeur believes that depth will allow Hughes to play with greater freedom.<\/p>\n “He’s going to be able to play his game and not have to worry about, ‘Oh, if I miss a game or two, the team’s going to crumble,'” Brodeur said. “Now we’ve got that support that if something happens, we should be OK.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hughes’ ability to create offense from seemingly impossible positions makes him the heartbeat of New Jersey\u2019s attack. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-851691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}