Ten years ago, when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, everybody was surprised. They were surprised that the award went to an American folk singer. They were surprised it took two weeks for him to accept the honor and the roughly one million dollar prize. But everybody was especially surprised by what he said. When it came to folk music, Dylan insisted in his acceptance speech, “I had all the vernacular down.” He continued:
But I had something else as well. I had principles and sensibilities and an informed view of the world. And I had had that for a while. Learned it all in grammar school. Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest—typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.
Dylan went on to describe three books that were most influential on his songwriting: All Quiet on the Western Front, Moby Dick, and, yes, The Odyssey.
Well, you might also be surprised to know that Jack Hughes, the broken-toothed, hockey-haired, puck-slinging United States Olympic hockey champion reads as well. According to Vogue magazine, he brought one book to the Olympics: The Odyssey.
Now, you may raise an eyebrow, shake your head, or even smirk at the proposition of a hockey grinder delving into Homer’s classic work that tests the mettle of the most academically hardened scholar. But doesn’t it make sense?
Weary from ten years of the unforgiving Trojan War, Odysseus (a Greek) just wants to go home. Shipwrecked and captive to the nymph Calypso for seven long years postwar, it is the longing for his wife, Penelope, and vision of his son, Telemachus, that feeds his daily angst. He just wants to go home.
And so he begins his journey.
Against sirens and Cyclops, through Charybdis and Scylla, Odysseus navigates fearsome odds with his men. There is fear and heartache, injury and death. But Odysseus sails on.
Through adversity and uncertainty, injury and absence, Jack Hughes, in his own way, is a modern-day Odysseus.
Jack Hughes—immortalized yesterday with a shattered-tooth smile and star-spangled flag-bedecked shoulders—knows a thing about difficult journeys. When selected first overall in the 2019 NHL draft as center for the New Jersey Devils, he was eighteen years old. He has set the single-season scoring record (forty-three goals in 2022-2023) for his team and already has 153 career goals (and 243 assists). His brother Quinn, an elite player with the Minnesota Wild and the United States Olympic team, describes Jack as “a freaking gamer” and “just mentally tough, [a guy who] has been through a lot, and loves the game.”
But what has Jack Hughes been through? What has been his “odyssey”?
In October 2021, Jack missed seventeen games with a dislocated shoulder. In 2022, his season ended with a sprained medial collateral ligament in his knee. In 2023-2024, he missed playing time due to an upper body injury and twenty games due to a shoulder injury. In 2025, a shoulder injury warranting surgery caused him to miss twenty regular season games and five playoff games. Later in the year, a deep cut in his thumb caused an eight-week absence. In January 2026, he suffered a lower body injury that pulled him from a game just before the Olympics. Year after year, Jack has been beaten up enough so that he has been unable to play a full eighty-two game season.
And yet, Jack keeps coming back.
In the recent days of the Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Jack performed splendidly, with three goals and three assists to help the United States achieve a 6-0 record and arrive at the gold medal game against Canada on February 22. As everyone now knows, February 22 is the very day, forty-six years ago, that the United States upset the Soviet Union in an epic Cold War showdown forever remembered as the “Miracle on Ice.”
In the gold medal game, the Canadians were hammering the Americans with a lopsided 42-28 shots on goal (and an incomparable defense by American goaltender Connor Hellebuyck). The Americans seemed to be a bit on their heels. And if that weren’t tough enough, late in the third period, Jack took a high stick to the mouth (costing him two teeth) from Canadian forward Sam Bennett. Having lost teeth in a prior NHL game, Hughes sighed, “I looked on the ice and saw my teeth like, ‘Here we go again.’”
But with broken shards of teeth and a mouth full of blood, Jack Hughes played on. Shortly after his injury, tied 1-1, and less than two minutes into a 3-on-3 overtime, Hughes collected a pass from Zach Werenski and flipped a shot past Canada’s goaltender. Goal and game.
America wins.
The rest is a blur. A bloody smile. American flags everywhere. The deceased Johnny Gaudreau’s children on the ice for photos with the team. The playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
One day prior to this hockey “day of days,” criticism floated about Jack Hughes and whether he could be counted on in the long term with his history of recurrent injuries. “I don’t know,” Hughes admitted, “I’ve had a lot of injuries, but I’m a hockey player. I think I’ve been playing well. I know everyone doesn’t watch the Devils every single night, but I love where I’m at, and I’ve always believed in myself. I know the player I am.”
Through adversity and uncertainty, injury and absence, Jack Hughes, in his own way, is a modern-day Odysseus. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, it seems the theme from that book worked its way into many of his games, either knowingly or unintentionally. Jack Hughes wanted to play hockey unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and such themes were fundamental.
And now—through it all and after it all—Jack Hughes can finally go home.
So keep smiling that bloody, broken-toothed smile, Jack.
Odysseus would be proud.
And so are we.