NEWARK — Jack Hughes signed his eight-year extension two years ago, and the Devils presented it as a foundation. The franchise was building something specific, and securing its best player through his prime was the cornerstone.
Luke Hughes is the second piece. The deadline to seek an eight-year extension for that piece arrives tonight at midnight.
At 22, Hughes is the fourth overall pick from the 2021 draft and the best young defenseman New Jersey has developed in a generation. He is not Jack, and nobody confuses their roles. Jack generates offense; Luke controls the game from the back end—a left-shot defenseman with the skating and passing range to run a power play from the point, suppress speed in transition, and quarterback the defensive structure that underpinned the Devils’ 2023 playoff run.
His emergence as a legitimate No. 1 defenseman accelerated in his second season and has not slowed. The Devils want eight years of that. The question is whether Hughes’ camp agrees that the timing is right.
Jack signed at 21, coming off his first serious playoff run, in a negotiation the Devils described afterward as relatively straightforward. Both sides understood the value. The franchise commitment was mutual. Luke’s situation is slightly more complicated. His camp has not been unwilling to discuss an extension — conversations have been ongoing since July — but the gap on term has not closed. New Jersey wants eight. Luke’s representatives have been more cautious about committing to a decade’s worth of hockey through his age-30 season on a franchise that, as good as it has been recently, has not yet won a playoff round.
The Devils won their division in 2023 and lost in the first round. They won 99 points in 2024 and lost in the second. Last season was interrupted by injuries to both their goaltending depth and several key forwards, and the team finished five points outside a playoff spot. Those facts do not diminish what Luke Hughes has done. They do make the long-term commitment he is being asked to sign slightly more complicated to evaluate. You are locking yourself in not to the franchise’s ceiling, but to whatever this roster becomes.
Luke Hughes has played well enough that his market value in three to four years, when he could reach unrestricted free agency on a shorter deal, would be substantial and well-defined. His camp knows this. A six-year extension gets him to unrestricted free agency at 28, at the precise peak of a defenseman’s prime. That calculus is not irrational. It is the same math that explains why Michkov’s camp in Philadelphia and Fantilli’s representatives in Columbus arrived at this deadline without closing the same gap on term.
What separates this situation from those in Philadelphia and Columbus is the Jack factor. Whatever else the Devils are or are not, they are a franchise with Jack Hughes under contract for the foreseeable future. A team committed to two brothers on the same timeline, competing for the same things, is a specific kind of organizational statement that is harder to replicate elsewhere. Luke’s camp understands this. It is not a coincidence that the conversations have continued rather than collapsed. It is just that continued is not the same as closed.
The Devils’ pitch is straightforward: come through your prime in New Jersey with your brother, on a team built to contend, committed to the window you both share. The counter is equally clear: show us the window is real before we lock in the decade. The Devils haven’t won a playoff round since 2023. Commitment at eight years is a bet on what this team becomes, and Luke’s camp wants more evidence of what it is.
Tonight does not determine whether Luke Hughes eventually signs with New Jersey. Both sides have indicated enough in the right directions that some version of a long-term deal seems likely eventually. What tonight determines is the length of the ask. If the Devils want eight years, that number is on the table for the next several hours. After midnight, they can offer seven. Whether one year at the back end of a major contract is worth the urgency of closing before midnight is a question both sides are weighing differently. That difference has kept this one open. Whether it stays open past tonight is what the next few hours will answer.
