Jack Hughes’ Jewish Mom, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, Is a Hockey Legend, Too
America’s hockey team just won its first Olympic gold in over 40 years at the Milano Cortina Olympics, all thanks to an overtime goal from Jewish New Jersey Devils player Jack Hughes.
Jewish moms everywhere are kvelling (and reminding you that, yes, he is Jewish).
Yet none have more reasons to kvell than Hughes’ own Jewish mom—Ellen Weinberg-Hughes.
Weinberg-Hughes, 56, has not one but two sons on that winning team. Her oldest son, Quinn Hughes, a defender for the Minnesota Wild, played alongside brother Jack. And Weinberg-Hughes was also on the coaching staff of the U.S. women’s hockey team as a Player Development Consultant. That team won gold the day before the men’s team did, making Ellen, technically, the first of the Hughes family to win Olympic Gold.
Weinberg-Hughes was raised Jewish in St. Louis, Missouri and Dallas, Texas. Her father was a doctor who helped advocate for kids’ with learning disabilities. Her brother, award-winning sociologist and president of Denison University Adam Weinberg, shared that growing up in the South, their family experienced “discrimination because of their faith and culture.”
Ellen has had a long and storied career in hockey. It all started when Adam started playing the game. “I wanted to do everything my little brother did and since I was a little girl, I wanted to play hockey,” she shared in a 2025 interview. She started playing when she was just 7-years-old.
A report from Channel 5 Action Sports News in Fort Worth featured 12-year-old Ellen playing with only boys on Texas’s Pee Wee team as an aggressive defender. The boys paid her nothing but compliments as her dad, Dr. Warren Weinberg, yelled instructions to the team from the sidelines. The older Weinberg said that he feared that as Ellen got older she would struggle to keep up with the “muscular strength” of the boys, but “she likes it, so we let her play.”
In that same interview, a young Ellen shares her dream of becoming a professional hockey player. “It’s just a goal that I want to reach, it’s something that I’ve wanted,” she said. When asked if she thinks she’s going to make it, she seems incredibly confident that she will.
and USA Hockey
And Weinberg-Hughes did. She was lucky to play hockey for the University of New Hampshire, which was way ahead of its time for offering women’s sports scholarships. She also played lacrosse and soccer for the school, because apparently, she is triple talented.
In 1992, she played on the U.S. women’s national hockey team, representing the country at the Women’s World Championship and earning a silver medal. She wasn’t playing in 1998 when women’s ice hockey first became part of the Olympics, but before the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics in Norway, the Norwegian ice hockey federation hired her as a USA Hockey ambassador to help promote women’s hockey.
“I went around to all the little towns and taught the girls how to play. It was awesome,” she recalled.
Aside from coaching and playing professionally, she also worked as a successful (and delightful) sports broadcaster. She was an ESPN sideline reporter during the 1999 FIFA Women’s Cup. She’s also broadcasted from the Olympics and the Frozen Four.
She was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2024, and in a video thanking the organization for the honor, she shared that she’s “so proud of my Jewish heritage.”
Ellen married former hockey player and coach Jim Hughes, and they had three sons—Jack, Quinn and Luke. While Jim isn’t Jewish, Ellen felt it was important to raise her sons, all professional hockey players (Luke plays for the New Jersey Devils with his brother), with Jewish traditions, including celebrating Jewish holidays and honoring their bar mitzvahs.
“We do light stuff for Hanukkah and then Christmas is when we get the big stuff, it’s important in my house, obviously my mom is Jewish and my dad is Catholic, I guess it’s important to know your heritage,” Jack Hughes, the first Jewish man to be a No. 1 NHL draft pick, shared during a 2023 interview.
Ellen quit her broadcasting career when it became clear all three of her sons were very, very serious about hockey. Her husband was busy as director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“She was taking us to the rink, the outdoor rinks, and teaching us how to skate. She really helped us grow our passion, driving us around everywhere, a full car. I’m super thankful,” Jack recalled in an interview with The Athletic.
When the kids got older, though, and started making hockey history in their own right, women’s ice hockey beckoned Ellen back. After the 2022 Olympics, she texted a congratulations to new team coach John Wroblewski. The two got to talking and he later offered her a job.
In an interview last year, Weinberg-Hughes, who has been on the coaching staff of U.S. women’s ice hockey team since 2023, shared how proud she was of how far women’s hockey has come, recalling how many talented women players before her never got to wear the U.S. professional jersey. “You can’t even calculate where the game is… We are coaching the best players in the world,” she shared with fierce pride, “and all they want to do is continue to reinvent the game, continue to set new bars.”
“She just has the perfect way of instilling confidence and getting through to us girls and building people up,” player Caroline Harvey said of Weinberg-Hughes. “I’ve never met somebody who thinks the game the way she does. She sees it and she just gets it and knows the perfect way to talk to each of us.”
Weinberg-Hughes is one lucky Jewish mom, too—her kids call her often to sound off on just about anything.
“She’s just got a big heart and she’s there for everyone. But just her intelligence, you can always rely on that. So we’re always bouncing things off her—not even hockey-related, just life things,” Quinn shared in one interview. Isn’t that just about any mom’s dream?
Unfortunately, it’s not always all happiness. Being the mom of professional players sometimes means sitting through a game grasping your seat with all your nervous might, or watching your son break his front teeth on Olympic ice.
Not every mom could handle it, but Ellen Weinberg-Hughes isn’t your average Jewish mom—she’s an ice hockey legend, through and through.
Mazel to to Ellen and the entire Hughes clan. Thank you for giving us so much to kvell about.
Lior Zaltzman is a contributing writer to My Jewish Learning and JLife magazine.
