Jack Hughes Rookie Year - Should we be Concerned?
Jack Hughes was recently the number one overall pick in the 2019 NHL draft. Jack Hughes came into the NHL with a lot of hype after average 2 points per game in the USHL and scoring 20 points in 7 games in the U18 World Championships. Jack Hughes got drafted by the New Jersey Devils and did not score at the rate his hype was predicting). In this post I am going to analyze if we should be concerned about Jack Hughes? TLDR: No!
In Jack Hughes’ rookie year he scored 7 goals and 14 assists for 21 points in 61 games (0.34 points per game). Let’s first look at how this compares to other number one overall draft picks. To accomplish this I got data from elite prospects for all number one overall draft picks from 2000 to 2019.
We see that Jack Hughes score 0.34 PPG in his first year, while the average #1 overall pick from 2000-2019 scored 0.73 points pergame. Additionally, Jack Hughes scored less points than any other #1 pick in the last 20 years.
Should We Be Concerned?
I next wanted to see how Jack Hughes did versus all other 1st round picks and compare how he did first players that had similar rookie seasons.
We see all of these players had very similar rookie seasons to Jack Hughes. In fact, Jack Hughes had a better rookie year than Tyler Seguin who has turned into a legitimate NHL superstar. We also see that Jack Hughes had a similar rookie year to Aleksander Barkov who has turned out very nicely.
One statistic about Jack Hughes that really intrigued me as a player was the way that he dominated the U18 World Championship (20 points in 7 games) and played in the U20 World Championship (4 points in 4 games) as a 17 year-old. I wanted to see how players that played in both the U18 Championship and played in the U20 Championship (as an underage player) and see how they compared to Jack Hughes.
I decided to make a scatter plot of every player that played in the U18 Championship and played in the U20 Championship as an underage player. All players that made an All-NHL Team are in pointed as navy blue, players that did not make an All-NHL team are orange, and Jack Hughes is the red dot.
We see that Jack Hughes scored more points in the U18 Championship, than all but a few players. It is quite impressive some of the names he scores more points - Connor McDavid, Patrick Kane (whom he is often compared to), Alex Ovechkin). The player he had the most similar U18 Championship and U20 Championship to is reigning NHL MVP Nikita Kucherov.
Conclusion
While Jack Hughes did not have a great rookie year, all other data is pointing to him having a great career. Lets see how he does in the years to come!