J.P. Hurlbert was still in diapers when his father Jeff, a Detroit transplant living in Dallas, threw the Detroit Red Wings on TV during the height of their 25-year playoff streak. And all the excitement got to the younger Hurlbert. He ran around the family home yelling, chanting:
Hockey! Hockey! Hockey!
“We literally just, I took him to the rink one day, and now we’ve traveled the entire world,” Jeff Hurlbert told The Detroit News. Then he deadpanned: “I’m broke, and there’s a chance he can play in the NHL.”
Since those early days, “hockey, hockey, hockey” ought to have summed up the life of J.P. Hurlbert, a top prospect for the 2026 NHL Draft and soon-to-be Michigan hockey player on a team eyeing a national championship. He has been a rink rat for the better part of his life, and now he’ll find out where his professional career may take him in Buffalo’s KeyBank Center, where he’s a candidate to be picked in Friday night’s first round.
“For me it’s been a lifelong dream,” J.P. Hurlbert told The News. “Every kid wants to be drafted into the NHL, so to be so close now, it’s just counting down the days, really.”
Then it’s onto more special business: Hurlbert will be the fourth generation of his family to attend the University of Michigan, the first to do so as an athlete where he joins a hockey team laden in talent (including projected 2027 No. 1 pick Landon DuPont).
That first time Dad took him on the ice? J.P. says he was wearing a winged helmet, just like the Wolverines.
“It was a no-brainer for me,” J.P. said. “And I’m just so excited for the first night to throw on that jersey and play at Yost.”
And when the dust settles in Buffalo, someday an NHL jersey, too.
A D-to-D pass
J.P. may have grown up in and around Dallas, Texas, his whole life, but the family’s Michigan ties are strong, and it’s there that the Hurlbert hockey lore begins.
J.P.’s great grandfather matriculated at the University of Michigan around the turn of the century — maybe before then, as it was long ago enough to make dates fuzzy. He started off four generations of Wolverines in the family.
If great grandpa introduced Michigan, it was J.P.’s grandfather who introduced hockey. He used to go to the Detroit Olympia and watch Gordie Howe take on Maurice “Rocket” Richard. And he regaled his family, including a young J.P., with those stories.
Jeff Hurlbert, J.P.’s dad, grew up in Detroit and eventually enrolled at Michigan, too, in the class of 1998. One of his close friends in the senior honorary society together was Michigan goaltender Marty Turco, who’d leave Ann Arbor with another national championship that year. (Jeff, for what it’s worth, also played goalie at Yost — in an IM game. He won, 16-12).
Fate kept Turco and Jeff close by. Turco played in the minor leagues for the K-Wings. In Western Michigan around the same time, Jeff met his wife, Sarah, who’s now a senior vice president at Coca-Cola. The couple moved to Dallas in the early 2000s, and at the same time Turco was breaking out as the Dallas Stars’ star goaltender. Today, Jeff and Turco are business partners.
In no small part have the Dallas Stars influenced hockey’s growth in Texas, too, enough that when J.P. came through the junior ranks, he could do so for the Dallas Stars Elite AAA program. He played there until he was 16, then made the 2024-25 U.S. National Team Development Program’s U17 team.
On top of the world
For years, the NTDP churned out loads of NHL talent, including quite a few players who walked through the doors of Yost in recent years such as Quinn and Luke Hughes, Matty Beniers, Rutger McGroarty, Seamus Casey and Frank Nazar. With the Canadian Hockey League off-limits for college eligibility, the NTDP stood as the premier destination for college-bound players. But the past couple of teams have been noticeably weaker. Then in 2024, the NCAA changed its rules about eligibility: players could play major junior in Canada. A flood of college-bound players hit the CHL, and CHL players headed to college.
After scoring 37 points in 56 games for the U17 team and 31 points in 34 games to lead the NTDP Juniors, J.P. made a decision: He wanted to leave the NTDP to play for the Kamloops Blazers. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly.
“It’s easy for me to say about going to Canada because I grew up 45 minutes from the border, but to go to British Columbia from Dallas, Texas — that’s the other half of the world,” Jeff Hurlbert said. “And it’s a pretty big leap of faith, especially given the circumstances, and you know what’s at stake to leave the U.S. national team. I was really proud of him.”
J.P. says he “enjoyed every second” of his time with Kamloops, where he scored 42 goals and had 97 points in 68 regular-season games, plus three points in four playoff appearances. Under the same tutelage that turned Red Wings seventh-rounder Emmitt Finnie into an NHLer and sent Harrison Brunicke to the Pittsburgh Penguins, Hurlbert’s scoring took off. He ended the season a WHL first-team all-star and the league’s rookie of the year.
“Being in that environment, playing with such great players, guys who are going to go on to play in the NHL,” J.P. said, “and I think the staff, and just the team I was involved with on a day-to-day basis was amazing. And then it was just a beautiful part of the world, too, living in Kamloops, British Columbia. There’s not too many places like it.”
He was on top of the world. Quite literally.
“We played right downtown on the river, in between all the mountains, super nice weather. I was lucky enough to live on top of the mountain,” J.P. said. “Kamloops, the whole city was basically looking down from my room, so it was something that was pretty breathtaking.”
Childhood dreams, now lofty expectations
Hurlbert, who ranks 12th in NHL Central Scouting’s North American skaters list and is mocked in the late first round by many prognosticators, could go to any number of teams given all the wheeling-and-dealing of NHL draft picks the past week. He does know his next stop: Michigan, where he may stay awhile.
“I want to be ready when my opportunity comes,” J.P. said. “But I’ve always dreamed of wearing a winged helmet, and so for me, take it one year at a time. But I want to be there. I want to be there for a while, I think.”
Maybe there’s a personal reason: he can influence the games. Because too many times as a child, Hurlbert watched Michigan’s teams tear through the postseason and make it to the Frozen Four only to lose.
Since his dad’s friend Marty Turco backstopped that 1998 title, Michigan has made 10 Frozen Fours. The Wolverines went home heartbroken in all of them, including a 2011 title game loss to Minnesota-Duluth and semifinal losses in four of the past five seasons. In 2018, J.P. was at the semifinal in Minnesota where Notre Dame’s Jake Evans scored the game-winner with 3.7 seconds to play. Just this past April, Denver knocked off Michigan in double overtime despite being outshot 52-26.
“They’re so close, and to kind of jump in here being a period or so away from a national championship game, for me it’s super exciting as an opportunity,” J.P. said. “To come in, I think this is the team and year that can really do it, and to be a kid who has watched it since they were 3 years old, going to Frozen Four games and watching the team lose, it’s just extra motivating to do it this year.”
Part of Michigan coach Brandon Naurato’s adjustment in recent years has been an emphasis on players who’ll stay for two or three years instead of coming in for one year and bolting to the NHL. Premium talents, with soft and hard skill aplenty, but guys who he can develop year over year and with that strengthen his team. The team Hurlbert joins is full of them — Michael Hage, a Montreal first-round pick entering his junior year; Pittsburgh first rounder Will Horcoff is sticking around for his third season; Garrett Schifsky and Ben Robertson are undrafted elder statesmen. A lot of last year’s freshman class is sticking around, too.
“Those who stay will be champions,” said J.P., referencing an old Bo Schembechler quote. “We want to win. That’s kind of the culture (Naurato) is trying to build, and I love that.”
New teammates also have been supportive of J.P. throughout the draft process, including Schifsky, a senior forward who called earlier this offseason to talk about the year ahead. J.P. saw fellow 2026 prospect and rising sophomore Adam Valentini at the NHL Combine, and with him were teammates Cole McKinney, Asher Barnett and Drew Schock.
Before all the serious business, though, this week is still a milestone for both J.P. and his family.
“He is the very definition of a rink rat,” Jeff Hurlbert said. “And he worked tirelessly for 16 years to get to where he is today. So it’s really neat to see him get the chance to live out his dreams, because he’s worked so hard and sacrificed so much.”
Said J.P., “Once that moment comes, it’s just gonna be really special.”
cearegood@detroitnews.com
@ConnorEaregood
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: J.P. Hurlbert following Michigan hockey roots after NHL Draft
Reporting by Connor Earegood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Connor Earegood, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
