Can Luke Hughes Be a Number One Defenseman in 2025-26?

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With August around the corner, the New Jersey Devils should be signing Luke Hughes to an extension in the near future. We all know that Hughes will be a member of the Devils for some years, but whether he is ready to be a number one defenseman is still up for debate.

The Jackson Blake Extension and Using Deferred Money

As I wrote earlier in the month, one way to really limit the cap hit on Hughes’s extension would be to used deferred money. The Carolina Hurricanes, who used this tactic with Seth Jarvis last year, used it again this week in the Jackson

Blake extension:

A standard eight-year, $45M deal would carry an AAV of $5.6M, but Jackson Blake's will be closer to $5.1M, because of deferred money.

Deferred money is outlawed in the next CBA, so the contract got done now.

The young man earns long-term security, and the #Canes save cap room. pic.twitter.com/cuOLLk6qrU

— Walt Ruff (@WaltRuff) July 25, 2025

As I wrote on June 6:

Using PuckPedia’s calculator, if the Devils deferred $4 million from each of the first two seasons, $3 million of both third and fourth years, and $2 million from the fifth and sixth years, they would bring Hughes to a cap hit of $7,496,313 per season, if using the SOF rate of 4.4%.

I won’t rehash all that I wrote about in that article, but it bears mentioning as we discuss Hughes’s true ability at this point in time.

Zone Starts and Polarized Performance

Like his brothers, Luke Hughes was drafted for how offensively dynamic his game is. It was a bit slow for Hughes to start showing that high level of chance-generation, but some underlying numbers show that Luke is heading in the right direction. Natural Stat Trick has an excellent shift performance tool, which allows people to see the apparent impacts of players when they start in the offensive, neutral, and defensive zones. As you can see below in Hughes’s offensive zone performance chart, the Devils generate far more offense above average with him on the ice than other defensemen, both on the team and around the league.

Natural Stat Trick

Creating goals is one thing, but Luke still needs to play well in the defensive zone to reach the same level of impact as Quinn. And, from those same shift performance charts, Luke still has some work to do in the defensive zone. If the first five or ten seconds after a defensive zone faceoff are the most essential to preventing goals, then Brad Shaw has some things to work

Natural Stat Trick

While Luke gives up a bit too much, defensively, the Devils still get back to creating offense much more quickly when he starts in the defensive zone. No doubt, the team is able to use his superior speed to transition quickly, as long as they survive the initial attack in the immediate aftermath of their defensive zone draws. Luke still has a way to go before he is pulling off end-to-end rushes on a regular basis, but his offensive impact may still be underestimated.

Luke Hughes’s Teammate Impact

For the most part, Luke Hughes has had good impacts on his teammates. However, this has not been universal. As you can see in HockeyViz’s teammate impact breakdown below, Luke has an outstanding offensive impact on the most talented players on the team, with his brother Jack having rather solid offensive chemistry with him, alongside Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Timo Meier. So, the idea that the Hughes brothers rely on each other too much when sharing the ice may be overstated. Perhaps most importantly, Luke had an outstanding two-way impact on his primary defensive partner, Brett Pesce.

HockeyViz

I have wondered whether it is time for Sheldon Keefe to commit to the best offensive pairing imaginable in Luke Hughes and Dougie Hamilton, but the strength of the Hughes-Pesce pairing does give me some pause. It’s not that I think that Luke and Dougie cannot succeed together (I think the highest-potential top pairing involves both of them), but Pesce may be too steady a partner for Keefe to pass up. Additionally, Luke still seems to struggle when on the ice with less-talented teammates. For example, when on the ice with Paul Cotter, Luke Hughes’s two-way results absolutely tanked, with the Devils giving up nine goals in 320 minutes. They only scored four in that time. In Luke’s other 962 minutes of five-on-five play, the Devils broke even on the scoresheet and out-chanced their opponents. But Cotter is not the only player who Hughes should not necessarily share the ice with too often:

Natural Stat Trick

When Ondrej Palat was on the ice with Luke Hughes, the Devils were outscored 17-12, despite many of those minutes also including Jack Hughes. Let’s break that down even further, while comparing it to how Luke and Jack play without Palat:

• All three: 196:57 TOI, 52.20 CF%, 100-94 SF-SA (51.55%), 11-10 GF-GA (52.38%), 9.28-9.63 xGF-xGA (49.09%)
• Luke + Jack: 96:52 TOI, 67.88 CF%, 62-27 SF-SA (69.66%), 6-2 GF-GA (75.00%), 5.6-1.78 xGF-xGA (75.91%)
• Luke + Palat: 101:40 TOI, 37.14 CF%, 27-52 SF-SA (34.18%), 1-7 GF-GA (12.50%), 2.58-4.5 xGF-xGA (36.48%)

As you can see in Natural Stat Trick’s shift performance chart for Ondrej Palat in the defensive zone, Palat had one of the worst defensive impacts on the Devils in 2024-25. Combining that performance with Luke Hughes, whose biggest defensive struggles seem to occur on zone starts, rather than when defending rushes against, is a recipe for disaster. At least, their results were even more disastrous than their already-poor expected numbers when Jack was not on the ice with them. On the other hand, Jack and Luke’s domination was exactly in line with their expected numbers when playing without Palat. Rather than the brother only playing sporadically without Palat dragging them down, Sheldon Keefe needs to make a point of getting them on the ice together in 2025-26.

Luke Needs to Work on His Shot

Something that could allow Hughes to work better with bottom six teammates would be working on his shot. With his ability to create space with his skating, Luke could develop into a blueline goal-scorer if he works some issues out of that side of the game. Per NHL EDGE, Luke’s shot is not exactly a burner, topping out at 90 and averaging 66 miles per hour. This places him around league average, though he records a well-above average quantity of 80+ MPH shot attempts with 39 such shots to place him in the 82nd percentile in that category. Considering, though, that his shot is not extremely hard, Luke needs to be mindful of his shot placement. Per HockeyViz, he does not do a great job of that:

HockeyViz

Simply put, Luke Hughes has a much higher percentage of his shots blocked than is normal, and he has been slightly below average at creating rebounds since making the NHL. I understand the latter: Luke tries to score on high shots. But perhaps pinching more before taking those shots would be better for him, as it would make it more difficult for opponents to block his shots, and it would be harder for them to use those blocked shots to counterattack against the Devils. When he gets into space, he shows a ton of promise.

Perhaps there’s something even more to why Luke works so well with Jack here. For Luke to take the puck towards the net, someone needs to cover him at the point. Some players in the bottom six, like Tomas Tatar, understood those shared defensive responsibilities. But, in general, the best Devils forwards at handling the puck by the point are Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt. And see how those kinds of cycling mindsets impact Luke’s ability to get shots in better scoring areas:

Regardless of how perfect his defensive impacts are or are not, nothing would be better for Luke Hughes than becoming a point-per-game defenseman. As difficult as that is to achieve, few players have the combination of skating and puck handling abilities that Luke has. Not a lot of defenseman can get from the point to the net as quickly and smoothly as he can. And when he got over his early-season injury, Luke looked like he was ready to hit another level, offensively. Hopefully he does even better after getting surgery this offseason. Thankfully, he has been seen without his sling this summer, so it seems that recovery is going well.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of Luke Hughes as a player? Do you think he’s ready for top matchups? What do you think of the breakdown between his play with the Devils’ elite forwards and their bottom six forwards? Do you think the contract will be signed before September 1? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.

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