This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jack Hughes

First overall in 2019, 281 points in 306 games, and sixty-two of eighty-two again.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2019-20	NJD	61	7	14	21	-26	10	4	0	2	123	5.7	15:52
2020-21	NJD	56	11	20	31	-3	16	1	0	1	142	7.8	19:04
2021-22	NJD	49	26	30	56	-16	0	6	0	2	165	15.8	19:34
2022-23	NJD	78	43	56	99	+10	6	9	0	6	336	12.8	19:58
2023-24	NJD	62	27	47	74	-12	12	9	0	4	274	9.8	20:58
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	306	114	167	281	-47	44	29	0	15	1040	11.0	19:07

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

62 games, 27 goals and 47 assists for 74 points, 9 on the power play, 12 penalty minutes, 20:58 a night and minus-12. He took 53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 992 minutes, the 76th percentile, and his ice went 43-47 against an expectation of 47.98-42.31.

Five goals of scoring that did not arrive and five more conceded than the chances called for. Seventy-four points in sixty-two games, after 99 in 78 the season before — the rate barely moved and twenty games did.

The Finesse Game

274 shots at a median of 26 feet with 31 per cent from inside 20, converted at 9.9 per cent against a career 10.96.

167 career assists in 306 games. He is the fastest player on this roster and probably one of the five fastest in the league; the whole of his game is carrying the puck through the neutral zone at speed and making the decision late. The shot is better than the conversion rate suggests.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 175 and is knocked off the puck by anybody who catches him.

12 penalty minutes in 62 games is almost nothing. He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and does not kill penalties — 0 career shorthanded goals in 306 games.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2019 out of Orlando, five seasons, and 281 points in 306 games, all of it for one organisation. His brother Luke is on this blue line and his brother Quinn is in Vancouver.

He is 23 and has missed twenty games in two of his three full seasons. Everything about the player is first-line and the only question anybody asks about him is how many nights he will be available.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
5 of 73 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 6.8%, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:00 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
66% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is the fastest player on this roster and probably one of the five fastest in the league; the whole of his game is carrying the puck through the neutral zone at speed and making the decision late.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 5-11 and 175 and is knocked off the puck by anybody who catches him.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and does not kill penalties — 0 career shorthanded goals in 306 games.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and does not kill penalties — 0 career shorthanded goals in 306 games.”
penalty-killerhe lacks it· trusted a man short
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and does not kill penalties — 0 career shorthanded goals in 306 games.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 992 minutes

Expected goals: 53.1%; 77th pct
Shot attempts: 55.7%; 91st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 43 for, 47 against. Expected: 48.0 and 42.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

87th

Numbers

77th

The two rank him within 10 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 62 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 83rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.02 a game
Distance: 3.77 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.5 mph; 79th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 992 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.1% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 992 minutes at five-on-five — 56th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tyler Toffoli	54.2%	52.0%	51.0%
Luke Hughes	55.1%	51.6%	50.4%
Erik Haula	51.3%	54.1%	53.3%

54.2% together, 52.0% for him apart and 51.0% for Toffoli apart. Toffoli was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Toffoli than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

357 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.