The Hughes brothers are no Hansons—these record-breaking phenoms can actually play.
Jack, a center for the U.S. national under-17 team and the early odds-on favorite to be picked No. 1 in the 2019 NHL draft, takes the puck to the net. The first Green Bay Gamblers defender doesn’t even get a stick on him. The next looks to have an angle, only to see the 5-foot-10, 157-pound Hughes slip the puck behind him and collect it on the other side, unscathed. Jack slithers left between defenders who hopelessly poke their sticks and make just enough contact to knock Hughes off balance—but not enough to deny him a shooting lane. He tumbles while getting off the shot, and the puck flies over the right shoulder of the Green Bay goalie, whose body language suggests he can’t believe what everyone just saw either.
Within a day of that play last November, video was making the rounds on Twitter, leading hockey fans across the continent to discover the 16-year-old phenom and, by extension, his equally gifted brothers, Quinn, 18, and Luke, 14.
No American family has ever had three players taken in the first round of the NHL draft, but in the next few years, the Hughes brothers have a shot. In fact, the 2019 draft is already being referred to as the “Jack Hughes draft.” In early March, Jack broke the National Team Development Program’s season scoring record for a player in his under-17 season: 87 points in 46 games. Through 51 games, he averaged 1.92 points, dwarfing the ppg marks of Auston Matthews (1.13) and Patrick Kane (1.11), the last two Americans who went No. 1 overall at the same age Hughes will be.
This story is from the April 23, 2018 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
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This story is from the April 23, 2018 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
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