{"id":418062,"date":"2026-01-20T15:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/418062\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:47:11","slug":"devils-luke-hughes-suffers-dislocated-shoulder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/418062\/","title":{"rendered":"Devils’ Luke Hughes Suffers Dislocated Shoulder"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Jersey Devils may have lost one of their best young defensemen for quite some time. According to insider Frank Seravalli<\/a>, the initial diagnosis on Devils\u2019 defenseman Luke Hughes<\/a> is that he dislocated his shoulder last night against the Calgary Flames.<\/p>\n

New Jersey is believed to be seeking a second opinion on Hughes\u2019 injury, though the team is confident he will miss some time, which team reporter Amanda Stein confirmed<\/a> after the game. The Devils won\u2019t return to New Jersey until January 27th (they are currently on a Pacific Division road trip), so it could be some time before they publicly reveal the severity of Hughes\u2019 injury.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s not beneficial to speculate about injuries, it\u2019s difficult to tell from the video exactly what happened. Hughes was racing Flames forward Justin Kirkland<\/a> for a loose puck, and Hughes immediately dropped his stick and clutched his right shoulder. There was no significant contact on the play.<\/p>\n

In terms of a recovery timeline, it largely depends on the severity of the separation. A month ago, Chicago Blackhawks phenom Connor Bedard<\/a> suffered a dislocated shoulder against the St. Louis Blues, causing Bedard to miss 12 consecutive games. If Hughes is on pace for a similar recovery, he won\u2019t return after the Olympic break in February.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the Devils continue their trend of suffering long-term injuries to their high-level performers. Before going down with an injury, Hughes had scored five goals and 26 points in 48 games, averaging 23:20 of ice time per game. He was New Jersey\u2019s leading scorer among defensemen by a healthy margin, and sat behind Dougie Hamilton<\/a> in CorsiFor% at even strength.<\/p>\n

Outside of what the injury means for Hughes specifically, it certainly won\u2019t help the team in their efforts to climb back into the playoff conversation. Although much of the Eastern Conference has been streaky this season, the Devils have been one of the worst-performing teams since December 1st, largely nixing any idea of this simply being a \u201cbad streak\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the team\u2019s defense, few organizations would be able to sustain the number of injuries that New Jersey has suffered over the years. Regardless, their window to make the playoffs this season is quickly closing. For comparison, since December 1st, the New York Rangers, who have already punted on the 2025-26 season, have earned 20 points in the standings, whereas New Jersey has only claimed 19 with an additional game played.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Jersey Devils may have lost one of their best young defensemen for quite some time. According…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,402,1769,151,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-418062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-injury","10":"tag-luke-hughes","11":"tag-new-jersey-devils","12":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115928213165063392","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}