Last month, Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald said that his top priority for this offseason was to get defenseman Luke Hughes signed to a contract extension. Fitzgerald went as far as to say that Luke wants to be a Devil long term and that they’d work on a deal once they got past the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Fast forward a month later and the Devils have yet to announce any deal with Hughes.

If this were September 13th instead of August 13th, and the Devils were on the precipice of the date for veterans to report to training camp, I’d have a little bit of concern that this situation is still lingering. After all, Fitzgerald said this was his top priority and for whatever reason, its still not officially done. Fitzgerald also suggested that whatever Luke’s number, in terms of his cap hit, comes in at would determine whether or not he could do anything else this offseason. As an outsider with no insight to the particulars of this situation, I’d be wondering what exactly the holdup is and trying to figure out whether or not the team is playing hardball or if the player and his representation might be unreasonable with their asks.

Fortunately, its not September 13th. It’s August 13th. Training camp is still well over a month away, and while one would prefer a younger player like Luke Hughes be present as Sheldon Keefe and the coaching staff hammer home the finer points of their system in camp, I don’t think its necessarily essential for Hughes to be there after playing in Keefe’s system last year.

Still, I think its fair to ask what the deal is for a top priority to remain unsolved. So lets try to piece together whatever we can from the slivers of information that we do have to see where we ultimately stand here.

The lack of a tangible deadline has dragged this out a little bit

Deadlines spur action, and the fact that Hughes is a 10.2(c) free agent made him ineligible to sign an offer sheet this summer. He also doesn’t have arbitration rights.

Why does this matter? It gave the Devils the luxury of time to conduct the rest of their business this summer without risk of losing the player. And the Devils did exactly that with their signings of Connor Brown and Evgeni Dadonov on July 1.

It’s a somewhat similar situation to what Dawson Mercer experienced last summer. The key difference between Mercer and Hughes though was that Mercer WAS offer sheet eligible. Except nobody presented Mercer with an offer sheet that was worth signing, otherwise, he might’ve considered signing that. Mercer ultimately did sign a three year deal with the Devils worth $4M AAV a few days into training camp last season. It should also be noted that Dawson Mercer and Luke Hughes share an agent in NHL superagent Pat Brisson.

The only real deadline that existed at the time for Mercer was the somewhat tangible threat that he’d miss regular season games, which is noteworthy for a player whos calling card is the fact that he’s never missed a regular season game through his first four NHL seasons. Remember, the Devils opened last season in Czechia. Mercer’s deal had to get done in time for him to join the team before they flew halfway across the world to take on the Buffalo Sabres to open the 2024-25 season.

Veterans don’t report to camp until September 17th. The Devils don’t play their first preseason game until September 21st. They don’t play their season opener until October 9th. There’s about a three week span in there from the beginning of camp until a few days before the season opener where Luke could sign, get a couple of practices in, and be ready to go Opening Night, not missing any games in the process.

It Doesn’t Sound Like Either Side Is Interested in a Bridge

Sportsnet’s Luke Fox reported last week that in regards to a Luke Hughes deal, both sides are focused on a long-term deal, likely a seven-year contract. Such a deal would align with what the Devils have previously done with franchise cornerstones Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes when they were coming off of their ELCs.

I think looking to go long-term, and not doing a bridge, makes sense for all parties involved.

One could argue that Luke Hughes might stand to make more money if he were to go shorter term now and cash in a few years down the road once the salary cap explodes. But I do think for him, playing with his brother Jack in New Jersey for the foreseeable future matters. I do think it’s a good hockey situation where the Devils should be a consistent playoff team over the next few seasons. And if the Hughes brothers are serious about trying to lure their eldest brother Quinn to the Garden State in a year or so, they’ll have a far easier time doing so with Luke’s number locked in and one less moving part to be concerned with.

If you’re the Devils, obviously the preference is to get Luke Hughes signed long-term and not via a bridge. Chris wrote a few weeks about about whether or not Luke could be their #1 defenseman. I’d argue Luke already is and has the upside to grow further. Either way, getting him locked in now with the salary cap about to explode will make it easier for the Devils to put the right pieces around their core.

If Fox’s report is indeed accurate, we can at least rule out ‘term’ as being the hangup between the two sides.

Is Jack’s Contract Actually Hurting Luke’s Cause?

Recently, The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn went through the best contracts in the NHL and ranked them, with Devils center Jack Hughes coming in at #1 on his list.

Jack Hughes is entering Year 4 of the 8-year deal he signed back in 2021 worth $8M AAV. But according to Dom’s model, Hughes is providing the Devils upwards of $15.6M of market value with what he brings to the table as a player.

Let’s go back to when that contract was signed though. Jack was coming off an underwhelming first two seasons in the NHL with 52 points across the two COVID shortened seasons. Jack got injured in Game 2 of his third season and signed that contract shortly before his return. At the time, Jack hadn’t “earned” a big contract extension like that, but I think its important to consider what both sides were probably thinking at the time. Tom Fitzgerald was making a calculated bet on Hughes’s talent and upside and that he was going to be the player the Devils envisioned when they took him first overall. And from Brisson’s point of view, I think its a reasonable contract to accept given what little Jack had shown at the NHL level at the time. It’s not that I think players and agents are looking to take deals of the premise of “what if I’m not that good”, but its also really difficult to turn down that kind of financial stability and generational wealth, especially when Jack was dealing with what was at the time the first major injury of his professional career.

Four years later, Jack has lived up to that deal and is clearly in the conversation for “best contract in the sport”. The problem with that is “best contract in the sport” is a polite way of saying “this dude is grossly underpaid”. And I don’t think players and agents like that because it suggests they took a bad deal.

Brisson has been at this a long time with a lot of star caliber players, so I don’t think he necessarily feels like Tom Fitzgerald hoodwinked him or got one over on him. But I do think he’s well aware of what the market is for comparable players. And even if he left some meat on the bone with a previous negotiation, like he might’ve with Jack, I don’t think he’s necessarily trying to make up for it this time around with a different player. Even with that player being the younger brother of the player who supposedly has the best contract in the league.

The salary cap has gone up significantly since Jack Hughes signed his extension, so I don’t really think the Jack contract should impact much going forward other than being a really good number on the Devils books. Luke is the latest Hughes brother up for a contract and I expect his AAV to top both Jack and Quinn once he signs his deal.

Cap space, the lack thereof, and whether or not it matters here

This is the part of my article that I will preface by saying its purely speculative, but let’s entertain the “what if” for a moment.

What if a deal is already agreed to and the only thing holding back an announcement is Fitzgerald freeing up cap space?

With just over $6.1M in cap space, that won’t be enough if Luke is signing a seven-year deal, but its also probably not that far off from what the Devils need. I’ve said all along that I think Luke probably comes in around $8.6M AAV.

The Devils are allowed to exceed the salary cap by 10% in the offseason, so they could theoretically announce a Luke deal whenever its done. But once they do that, there’s a hard number where we know exactly how much the Devils are exceeding the salary cap by and what they need to do between now and the beginning of the season to become cap compliant. Its something that puts the team in a potential bind when it comes to talking trade and finding a way to shed a salary.

There’s been plenty of speculation of whether or not they might trade Dougie Hamilton or Dawson Mercer, and obviously moving either one would free up the cap space required. Of course, moving them presents a new set of challenges as well. Maybe the Devils have someone lined up who would take Ondrej Palat in a cap dump trade, but I would think if that were coming, it might’ve been done already before the Devils spent their money in free agency. That leaves what I think is the most likely option and one that I recently wrote about in placing Johnathan Kovacevic on LTIR.

For what its worth, I don’t think a deal is actually done yet, and I don’t think Fitzgerald is channeling his inner Lou Lamoriello where the signed deal is sitting in his desk drawer and he’ll file it with the league whenever he gets around to it. I also don’t think Fitzgerald screwed up by only leaving just over $6M in cap space and ultimately forcing him to make a decision elsewhere to get this done. I do think there’s a plan there. Whether or not I agree with it is another thing entirely, but I don’t think this is a situation where they didn’t budget their money properly.

I do think the growing salary cap is a big factor in these negotiations though, and I think the Devils need to make the number big enough now if they’re going to get Luke to sign away the next seven years of services to the Devils. And the reality is that the Devils didn’t have a ton of salary cap flexibility this offseason in the first place. They’re trying to thread the needle here and the task is being made all the more difficult in part because they haven’t found a way to clear Palat’s cap hit off of their books.

Until a big-time insider like an Elliotte Friedman or Pierre LeBrun come out and say there’s reason to be concerned here, I don’t think there’s much reason to be concerned.