The Charlotte Checkers, AHL affiliates of the Florida Panthers, announced that two forwards have been signed to AHL deals: Riley Hughes and Philip Tresca.
Hughes, 26, is a 2018 seventh-round pick of the New York Rangers and a 6’2″, 194-pound forward. His signing marks a return to Charlotte, having spent almost his entire professional career thus far either with the Checkers or their ECHL affiliate, the Savannah Ghost Pirates.
The son of Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes, he spent a half-decade playing college hockey, spending four years at Northeastern University and his graduate transfer year at Ohio State.
Across 141 games of NCAA experience, Hughes scored 37 points. After his graduate season at Ohio State, where he scored five points in 23 games, Hughes turned pro in the spring of 2024 by signing with the ECHL’s Iowa Heartlanders.
In his brief 12-game stint in Iowa late in 2023-24, Hughes scored four points in 12 games. He then earned a one-year, two-way AHL deal from Charlotte for 2024-25. He began the year in the ECHL, and quickly showed his capabilities in the third-tier league, scoring 11 points in his first seven games with the Ghost Pirates.
By late November that year, Hughes had earned the first AHL call-up of his career, and he would remain in the AHL with the Checkers for almost all of the rest of the season, save for a brief four-game reassignment in February. He managed to skate in 31 games for Charlotte, scoring eight points.
Entering 2025-26, Hughes likely hoped he would build off of his 2024-25 season and firmly establish himself as a full-time AHL player, even if just in a limited bottom-six capacity. But that did not happen. He didn’t make the Checkers out of training camp, and spent the entirety of 2025-26 in the ECHL with Savannah.
Although Hughes scored a healthy 14 goals and 33 points in 57 ECHL games, it was undoubtedly a disappointment for him to go the entire year without an AHL call-up. With a new AHL contract signed, albeit still with a two-way structure, Hughes has a clear developmental goal for the upcoming campaign: finally secure a full-time spot in the AHL.
The other player signed by the Checkers today is Tresca, a 24-year-old center. The Massachusetts native was a near point-per-game scorer at the USHL level who has spent the last four seasons playing at Harvard University. A low scorer for most of his career with the Crimson, Tresca’s senior campaign in 2025-26 was his most productive, as he managed 19 points in 30 games.
Tresca has not yet made his debut in professional hockey, and while he’s undoubtedly hoping to break camp on the AHL roster with Charlotte, it’s entirely possible, if not likely, that he’ll begin his pro career in the ECHL just like Hughes, and have to work his way into consideration for an AHL roster spot.