It was an amazing weekend for the New Jersey Devils and they didn’t even have a single game. They are currently on their break which means we won’t see them until Thursday. However, some players in the organization lit the weekend on fire.
In the Olympics, Arseni Gritsyuk was outstanding for the Russian Olympic Committee which was awesome to see. He appears to be good enough to play in the NHL at some point but nobody knows what his future looks like right now.
The same can be said for Alex Holtz who has been amazing for the Utica Comets. He scored again over the weekend so you have to wonder how much longer he is going to spend down there. It seems like he could be called up again in no time.
With all of that in mind, Luke Hughes’ play at the University of Michigan is stealing the show right now. They just came off a weekend sweep over their rivals in the Ohio State Buckeyes. In the two games, Hughes made a bit of school history while helping his team to victory.
New Jersey Devils draft pick Luke Hughes has been amazing for Michigan.
On Friday night, Luke Hughes scored his 14th goal of the season. That broke the Michigan record for goals by a freshman defenseman. Later that night, he added an empty netter to get his now record total up to 15 goals.
One night later, Hughes made a brilliant one-man play to score again so now he has 16 on the season. He also has 16 assists for 32 points in 32 games played. It has been an outstanding season as he is looking like he could be one of the best freshman defensemen ever.
That win took Michigan’s win streak to seven and they are now 16-6-0 which is good for first in the Big Ten. Minnesota and Notre Dame are right there in the standings going into the final weekend of the regular season. The Wolverines have a huge set next weekend with the aforementioned Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
That is going to be so good for Hughes and his teammates as they prepare for the big tournament. They have a legit chance at the one seed here. This is a chance to see if he can rack up some more points en route to a Frozen Four appearance (and maybe victory).
It was risky to draft Hughes with the fourth overall pick in 2021. If he fails, people are going to say that he was only drafted to appease Jack Hughes. However, he is proving that was absolutely worthy of a pick that high regardless of which team was taking him.
Surely it will be interesting to see if Luke can translate this to the NHL one day. So far he looks like some of the great NHL defensemen looked like in college so it is certainly possible. First, let’s see what he can do with Michigan in this his freshman year.