women\u2019s hockey team\u2019s win over Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\nJack Hughes celebrates after scoring the game-winning goal in the gold-medal game Feb. 22. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The first family of American hockey had conquered the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir confidence, their need to compete, to want the puck in key moments, they practiced like that their entire lives,\u201d Dan Ninkovich, a development coach who spent years working with the family, told The Post. \u201cWhen I watch their games, I just yell at the screen:<\/p>\n
\u2018Give them the puck and let them dance.\u2019<\/p>\n
Jack is now headed back to New Jersey, rejoining Luke \u2014 who is currently on long-term injured reserve \u2014 before Wednesday\u2019s game in Newark. Quinn will take the ice Thursday with the Minnesota Wild.<\/p>\n
They are the only three American brothers ever selected in the first round of the NHL draft, the covermates of \u201cNHL 25\u201d (video game), the owners of contracts worth more than $174 million combined.<\/p>\n
Hockey has given them everything.<\/p>\n
Luke, Quinn and Jack Hughes are pictured Jan. 12. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cJim and I met through hockey,\u201d Ellen told NBC in 2019. \u201cWe both love the game and think it\u2019s the greatest game in the world. And we\u2019re lucky that all three of them found their passion for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim grew up a Yankees fan on Long Island (Hicksville), raised by a father, Marty, who spent three decades as a member of the New York Fire Department. Jim became a star defenseman and captain at Providence College, briefly playing in the minor leagues before beginning his coaching career at his alma mater in 1992.<\/p>\n
Ellen Weinberg, who played mixed-gender hockey as a kid in Texas, earned a soccer scholarship from New Hampshire. After also walking onto the school\u2019s standout hockey team, she was inducted into the university\u2019s Hall of Fame (she also made the lacrosse team despite never having played the sport). She won a silver medal at the IIHF Women\u2019s World Championships in 1992, but a knee injury forced her to retire before women\u2019s hockey debuted at the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Ellen \u2014 who joined Team USA in 2023 alongside a head coach (John Wroblewski) who guided each of her sons with the U.S. National Team Development Program \u2014 turned to broadcasting, covering events like the Olympics and Frozen Four, but left her TV gig in 2009 to focus full-time on three young boys.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a family-first mentality,\u201d Ninkovich said. \u201cJim and Ellen are great humans and always take care of the people around them. They lead by example. Their house is always full of people and life and the boys took after them.<\/p>\n
Quinn Hughes (43) and Jack Hughes are pictured during the Wild-Devils game Jan. 12. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the All-American family.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 1, Jack needed a weekly babysitter, so Ellen could take her 2-year-old, Quinn, on the ice. At 4, Jack routinely skated on a frozen baseball field with his father, outside the classroom window of a jealous and distracted Quinn, whose family convinced the school to allow the eldest brother to join during lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a ton of money, and so we did what we knew, and all I knew was sports,\u201d Ellen told The Athletic earlier this month. \u201cI knew how to get out and play tackle with them. I knew how to run around the field. I knew how to go skate with them. There was no grandiose plan, but that\u2019s what Jimmy and I knew. We loved sports. They were always around sports. And I think just having three kids so close in age, because we were moved around a bit, they became best of friends. But we had no big plan. It was just like, \u2018OK, can we just play nice?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Usually.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There was the time that a 3-year-old Jack was checked by his big brother into the makeshift boards in their basement, opening a skull-length gash that required stitches. Years later, Quinn and Jack dropped their gloves, ending with the latter\u2019s braces ripped from his face.<\/p>\n
They played with pucks into darkness on frozen ponds, scarfing down pizza and hot chocolate on the rides home, then added more dents to their basement walls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were always competitive, but we always wanted the best for each other,\u201d Jack told The Post in 2023. \u201cWe were each other\u2019s biggest fans, all three of us. And of course there\u2019s sibling rivalry within the house, within the walls, but once we get outside the house it\u2019s all love and we\u2019re all rooting for each other, want[ing] each other to have the most success we can have, and everyone has each other\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Tavares starred for the Toronto Marlboros. Connor McDavid raised the bar at the formidable youth power.<\/p>\n
Then came Quinn, Jack and Luke.<\/p>\n
2026 WINTER OLYMPICS<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Greater Toronto Hockey League is very competitive and it played a big role in their upbringing,\u201d Ninkovich said. \u201cThere was lots of scrutiny and pressure to prepare them for the next stage. It\u2019s not for everyone, but they thrived in the pressure cooker in Toronto.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brothers \u2014 who moved to Michigan in high school \u2014 picked up a playbook to their future when the Maple Leafs\u2019 2014 first-round pick, William Nylander, moved in with the family.<\/p>\n
They learned the importance of Team USA\u2019s greatest glory while tagging along with their father to Lake Placid for national team development camps, already fluent in lessons their peers weren\u2019t privy to.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe things he was telling 20-year-old prospects, he was telling to us when we were 12,\u201d Jack told ESPN in 2018. \u201cWhenever we got the chance to watch a game with my dad, it was like watching video with an NHL coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn, 26, attended Michigan, then was selected by the Canucks with the No. 7 pick of the 2018 NHL Draft. In Vancouver, he became a two-time All-Star and the Norris Trophy winner in 2024 before joining Minnesota in a blockbuster trade in December. The defenseman has 64 goals and 402 assists in 485 career games.<\/p>\n
Jack Hughes (l.) and Quinn Hughes (r.) are pictured Feb. 22. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Jack, 24, was selected first overall by the Devils in 2019, scoring his first goal against Quinn and the Canucks later that year, with his father and grandfather in attendance. The oft-injured center and three-time All-Star reached 100 goals faster than any player in Devils history, having posted 153 goals and 234 assists in 404 career games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luke, 22, who also attended Michigan, joined Jack in New Jersey after being taken with the fourth overall pick in the 2021. The defenseman has 22 goals and 97 assists in 204 career games, having appeared in two postseasons with his brother.<\/p>\n
The first \u201cHughes Bowl\u201d took place on Dec. 5, 2023, when they became the second American family to have at least three brothers appear in the same NHL game. Just over a month ago, the three brothers \u2014 who live together in the offseason in a lakeside home in Michigan \u2014 shared the ice for the third time as pros.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always dreamed of playing in the Show with each other, but at the same time, it\u2019s such an unrealistic goal,\u201d Jack told The Post in 2023. \u201cFor even one of the three of us to make the NHL, the odds are so low. \u2026 It\u2019s pretty ridiculous how it worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are eternally golden \u2014 the first family of American hockey.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents always told us how lucky we are to have each other,\u201d Quinn said before his first NHL game against Jack in 2019. \u201cYou don\u2019t really get that as a kid. \u2026 Looking back, I understand how lucky I was to have two brothers play hockey and love it as much as I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first family of American hockey called Canada home. Quinn and Jack Hughes, born 19 months apart in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,1272,161,38,5280,151,4,2602,43,162,2787,31286],"class_list":{"0":"post-468935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-jack-hughes","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-minnesotawild","13":"tag-new-jersey-devils","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-olympics","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-wild","18":"tag-winter-olympics","19":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116123059052687366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468935","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=468935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}