Luke Hughes' Off-Puck Activation Goal: Brotherly Love
The Jack Hughes and Luke Hughes connection is always most exciting to watch when the timing on their passing is right, and the timing on their activation is right as well. It’s no secret how talented the Hughes brothers are when on the ice together at 5v5 and the power play, where we know how talented Jack has been in the league for obvious reasons, and Luke has now become a player of his own in the league as well. He doesn’t necessarily play really similar to his brothers given he is a much bigger player relative to the oldest, Quinn in Vancouver, and Luke has more range of motion and covers a larger amount of ice with his 6’2 frame and skating ability.
Last night on his goal against Seattle, Luke did a great job activating down the flank on the strong side as his brother Jack was walking the offensive blue with the puck. As Jack moves across the line, this gives Luke the leeway to activate into space and create a passing lane for his brother. Luke does this really well, where he keeps his head up and keeps his body open to Jack, which allows him to catch the pass comfortably on his stick and then be able to quickly shoot the puck from his hip pocket area.
Luke made this look easy because all he had to do were multiple things:
One of the most underrated aspects of this sequence was because of his ability to use the mohawk, attack into space, and that allowed him to quickly change the angle in the shot lane. Hughes did a great job catching the puck on his stick and did a great finding the short side of the net on Grubauer up high.
Also give credit to how Jack was able to walk the line in this scenario, where Jack was able to do a great job protecting the puck and walk the line with his edgework to get into space.