We’re well into the offseason, and one calendar month before hockey activities begin in the NHL. Luke Hughes, a restricted free-agent, and the New Jersey Devils have yet to come to terms on a new contract. Could part of the stall stem from brother, Jack Hughes, and the contract he inked in November 2021?
After the July 1st Free-Agent Frenzy, Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald explained his No.1 priority is to get the 21-year-old defenseman signed to a new contract.
Since then, the Devils have extended only Thomas Bordeleau, and it has otherwise been quiet.
Clearly, there is a standoff between the youngest Hughes brother and the Devils. No one is sounding the alarms yet, there’s still time to sort this deal out. However, as if the standoff didn’t have Devils fans on the edge of their seat to this point, a newly surfaced factor—at least to the public eye—could be impacting negotiations.
On the latest episode of 32 Thought’s podcast, Elliotte Friedman explained with the cap rising, and as it will continue to rise for the next several seasons, the market is going through a reset.
“You know, I get, I get Devil’s fans asking me all the time, what’s going on with Luke Hughes? The Canadians fans are wondering about Lane Hutson.
“I just think that with the cap going up, the market is getting reset. I don’t see problems getting these guys signed, but I do see the sweet spot for both team and player being a challenge. Everybody just trying to figure out where that is,” Friedman said.
One of the hurdles in the process of getting Hughes signed to a new deal is the revelation that teams do, in fact, read what the media puts out there. Recently, The Athletic published the top-10 bargain contracts in the NHL, featuring Jack Hughes. According to Friedman, there are teams who don’t like to appear on such a list.
“So what it sounds like is that one of the things that’s really obvious, Kyle [Bukauskas], is that there are a lot of players who don’t want to sign a contract that quickly goes and looks like too much of a bargain. And so, for example, this week, The Athletic did an article which was the top-10 best value contracts in the league. And the funniest reaction I had to that was that someone told me that there are teams out there who hate being on that list. Like if they get a player who’s on that list, they think it makes it harder to negotiate contracts with another player. Because agents will say, ‘Oh, you got that guy. Well, you’re not getting me.’
“And yeah, it does happen. I’ve been told that this does occur. And you’d think the teams would be upset about being on the, ‘These are the worst contracts [reports],’ and I’m sure they are. But I had a couple of guys tell me that you also don’t want to be on the best list because then people really grind in and dig against you,” Friedman explained.
Not only did Jack Hughes make the top-10 list by The Athletic, but he was first overall. The way Hughes’ contract was determined the biggest bargain was by comparing his net rating and the expected salary associated with it to a players current contract. As a result, there’s a $38 million differential, or $7.6 million per season over the next five years that Hughes should be making, but isn’t.
It should come as no surprise to learn that both Jack and Luke Hughes have the same agent, Pat Brisson of CAA Sports.
Perhaps Brisson is one of those agents who doesn’t like to see Hughes on the bargain deal throne, while Fitzgerald has a mutual feeling despite their respective reasons.
The negotiations very well could come down to percentage of the cap. When Jack Hughes signed, his $8 million cap hit accounted for roughly 10.8% of the Devils’ cap. Hughes then blossomed during the 2022-23 season into the elite, impact forward the Devils believed he would be after selecting him first overall in 2019, scoring 43 goals and 99 points that season.
On cap percentage, Friedman explained, “It’s very obvious out there that teams are trying to hold the line and say, ‘OK, well, the top players are going to get what they’re going to get.’ But it’s very obvious that some of the teams are trying to say, ‘Hey, whatever percentage was signed in this contract before this cap bump, we don’t want to do that.’ Because, for example, a percentage that might be worth, say, say for argument’s sake, five or six million, well, that could be going up in the next couple of years to seven, eight, nine million. And they’re like, ‘We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to argue percentage anymore.’ And the players, of course, are going to argue percentage.”
There’s no doubt that Fitzgerald would love to get his brother, Luke, secured to a contract with similar benefits to his salary cap situation for the long-haul, despite not wanting to appear on such lists that could impact future negotiations.
And although there’s mutual interest between the Devils and Luke Hughes on a long-term extension, both Hughes’ agent and the player very well could this very situation in the back of their minds.
“The one thing I’m always reminded about, we don’t talk about it very much, Kyle, is that like these players, they don’t only only compete on the ice. They compete in terms of contracts. I have several agents who say to me, especially with younger players… they’re even more competitive than ever when it comes to their contracts. And so they don’t want to sign contracts that they look back at in a year or two and say, ‘Oh, I really regret signing that.’”
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