Devils rookie, Luke Hughes to be popular chase card in the 2023-24 Series One Young Guns class
Hockey card collectors got a nice surprise when Upper Deck announced an early release for its flagship Series One set. Typically, the hobby has to wait until mid-November to dive into one of the hobbies most anticipated sets of the year. However, the product is ready for distribution and will be available to the public on October 18th.
Series One is always a fun product to rip into as it contains the highly coveted Young Guns rookie cards of the league's top freshmen. So when the checklist dropped last week I was excited to check it out and see which top rookies I should be hunting.
In this five-part series, I will be ranking the top five chase cards in the set.
The third player in this series I am going to highlight is card #248 Luke Hughes.
Everyone loves the Hughes family and hobbyists everywhere will be hoping to snag the Young Guns of the youngest Hughes brother.
There seems to be a lot of excitement for the young two-way defenseman. Surely, some of the hype is due to the name as his brothers Jack and Quinn Hughes have carved out quite remarkable careers already with New Jersey and Vancouver. That said, I don’t think nepotism is solely at play here as the youngest of the Hughes brothers really started generating buzz himself at the World Juniors two seasons ago and carried that hype with him for two years at Michigan prior to turning pro last spring.
Defensemen don’t typically get a lot of hobby love unless they can rack up points. This is exactly what Hughes has shown the ability to do through his collegiate and very brief pro career to this point. The rookie blueliner showed promise in his rookie season in the NCAA for the Wolverines scoring 17 times with 39 total points in 41 games. He followed up that year with 10 goals and 48 points in his 2022-23 sophomore campaign.
After a successful collegiate career, Hughes decided to go pro last spring where he played in two regular season games where he had a goal and an assist. He then added two helpers in the three playoff games for the Devils, including one game where he had 35 shifts, totaling more than 25 minutes of ice time.
Hughes looks to factor into the Devils' blueline plans this upcoming season where New Jersey is hoping to take another step toward the ultimate goal: winning a Stanley Cup.
eBay presales of this card have been in the $100 range. Personally, that seems high for a defenseman, but it just goes to show the level of hype for this player.
Will you be making Luke Hughes a priority chase card when the set releases on October 18th?