Why T.J. Hughes is the top college free agent on the market
Another Hughes is set to join the NHL. This one, though, bears no relation to Quinn, Jack, and Luke. With Michigan suffering a crushing 4-3 double overtime loss to the University of Denver in the NCAA men’s Frozen Four semifinals on Thursday, Michigan captain T.J. Hughes’ collegiate career is over, and he now becomes the most sought after college free agent available.
The forward from Hamilton, Ontario just put up 22 goals and 35 assists for 57 points over 40 games in his senior season with the Wolverines. He has been named as one of the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award, given annually to the top NCAA men’s hockey player. Hughes, 24, is the only finalist who is an undrafted free agent, and should draw significant interest from plenty of NHL teams.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff’s prospect analyst Steven Ellis to discuss what makes Hughes such an intriguing prospect.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Give us the scouting report on T.J. Hughes, and maybe even a landing spot that you potentially like for him.
Steven Ellis: I remember watching him when he was an AP with the Burlington Cougars in the OJHL, and watching him go out there and score two goals in his first game. I was like “Man, this guy’s got a lot of talent.” He was great in Junior B, now he’s got this opportunity to prove himself in Junior A. He didn’t end up actually playing anymore Junior A games in Ontario, he went to Alberta where he was very productive, 127 points in 2021-22. That year was important because that was the first year of post-COVID hockey, so for everybody it was just trying to adjust to being back in those team situations, and being back in the grind that really was lost the year before, and he was outstanding, over a goal per game.
When you at a lot of these guys that end up becoming top college free agents, they’re typically players that are late bloomers and maybe kind of figured it out in there second-last year of college or final year of college, but with Hughes, he was productive all four years. I remember, he was one of the top college free agents two seasons ago. This isn’t something where he kind of came out of nowhere. He’s been very productive that entire time, a point-per-game player in every year but his freshman season, and he just missed out on that, he was very close. I love how offensively gifted he is. I feel like he’s someone who can fit into a middle-six pretty quickly. As for teams that should be interested in him, most teams should. It feels like he could already be a pretty decent part of a team like Vancouver. I would like to see him on Boston, I feel like that’s a team that could get a bit more out of their scoring depth.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…