Rachel KryshakCloseRachel KryshakESPNRachel Kryshak is a professional data consultant specializing in data communication and modelling. She’s worked in the NHL and consulted for professional teams across North American and Europe. She hosts the Staff & Graph Podcast and discusses sports from a data-driven perspective.Greg WyshynskiCloseGreg WyshynskiSenior NHL writerGreg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.Follow on XDec 16, 2025, 09:30 AM ET
play1:47Why Quinn Hughes’ trade to Wild puts rest of NHL on noticeGreg Wyshynski breaks down why he loves the trade of Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild.
Welcome to Minnesota! Quinn Hughes scores his first goal for the Wild (0:48)Quinn Hughes scores his first goal for the Wild to give them a 4-0 lead vs. the Bruins. (0:48)
Why Quinn Hughes’ trade to Wild puts rest of NHL on noticeGreg Wyshynski breaks down why he loves the trade of Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild.
play0:47Quinn Hughes notches goal on the power playQuinn Hughes notches goal on the power play
play0:49Brock Boeser lights the lamp for CanucksBrock Boeser lights the lamp
Quinn’s path to playing with his brothers — in New Jersey or otherwise
In his first game as the greatest player ever acquired by the Minnesota Wild, Quinn Hughes immediately started doing Quinn Hughes things for his new team.
The fans roared. The Wild’s social media team declared “WELCOME TO QUINNESOTA” when posting the highlight.
Ecstatic that their team landed the coveted defenseman in a trade last Friday, Wild fans gave Hughes an ovation as he left the ice in warmups, then another during starting lineups. They cheered every time he touched the puck.
“That was pretty special, honestly,” Hughes said after Minnesota’s 6-2 win. “I know it’s a hockey market, but that was exciting.”
Also exciting: When one of the NHL’s superstar players is traded in-season to a surprise destination.
Why Quinn Hughes’ trade to Wild puts rest of NHL on notice
Greg Wyshynski breaks down why he loves the trade of Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild.
Hughes, 26, played for the Vancouver Canucks for eight seasons, establishing himself as a franchise player and one of the world’s premier defensemen. He’s been a finalist for the Norris Trophy in two straight seasons, winning the award in 2024. Since 2022, he’s second only to Colorado Avalanche star Cale Makar (372 points) in points by a defenseman, with 336.
The Canucks were going nowhere except into a rebuild. Hughes was going to walk away as a free agent in the summer of 2027. So the decision was made by Vancouver president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and the Hughes camp to seek a trade.
Quinn Hughes ended up in Minnesota, to the shock of the NHL. That’s because the Wild were never mentioned as a destination, and because of what the team traded to acquire him. The Wild gave up three former first-round selections — center Marco Rossi, forward Liam Ohgren and defenseman Zeev Buium — and a 2026 first-round pick to acquire Hughes, with no guarantee that he’ll sign an extension in Minnesota.
How did this trade happen? What does it mean for the teams involved and the teams that didn’t — or couldn’t — make this trade?
After conversations with around a dozen NHL executives, agents and players from around the league, here’s the behind-the-scenes story on one of the most significant trades in recent hockey history — and the aftershocks.
To understand why Hughes is no longer with the Canucks, it’s important to understand how things got so bleak as to have him want to leave now.
In May 2020, former Vancouver GM Jim Benning announced that amateur scouting director Judd Brackett could not reach a new contract agreement and would part ways with the team.
Brackett and highly respected scout Dan Palango left Vancouver and joined the Wild under GM Bill Guerin. In a short time, Brackett terraformed the Wild’s prospect field. He had a hand in drafting every player the Wild just traded to Vancouver for Hughes — who, it should be said, Vancouver selected at seventh overall in 2018 on Brackett’s advice.
In January 2025, the internal drama had intensified to the point where Miller was traded to the New York Rangers.
So began Vancouver’s need to bolster the center position, which was among the team’s strongest prior to Horvat’s trade. Many in the league still wonder how the Canucks’ fortunes would be different if Horvat had been extended in the summer of 2022.
Vancouver finished with a .549 points percentage last season, missing the playoffs. Coach Rick Tocchet decided to leave the Canucks for the Philadelphia Flyers. Tocchet and Hughes were close, but the coach’s exit was a symptom of larger issues.
Vancouver continued to make counterintuitive decisions for a team on the road to a potential post-Hughes rebuild. The Canucks extended 30-year-old goalie Thatcher Demko (three years, $25.5 million) and 29-year-old winger Conor Garland (six years, $36 million), who both would have been unrestricted free agents next summer. They brought back unrestricted free agent winger Brock Boeser, 28, on a seven-year, $50.75 million deal that carries a full no-movement clause until 2029.
Trying to convince Hughes to stay extended to off-ice moves. When Tocchet left for the Flyers, the Canucks elevated assistant coach Adam Foote — who had one year of previous head coaching experience, with the Western Hockey League’s Kelowna Rockets in 2019-20 — to the big job. Foote was responsible for coaching the Canucks’ defensemen, and the hire was immediately labeled as a way to curry favor with Hughes.
“He wanted to be closer to his family, closer to his brothers, wanted to play with his brothers at some point,” Rutherford said. “It doesn’t mean it has to be in the next couple of years. He could do it in his 30s, I suppose. So that was really around the time that I was pretty much 100% sure that there wasn’t going to be any convincing him to change his mind.”
The Canucks were 9-12-2 and hovering near the Western Conference basement heading into Thanksgiving. Because of that mediocre start, Rutherford and Allvin informed the rest of the NHL that they were looking to make trades. While their motivation was moving pending unrestricted free agents such as forwards Evander Kane and Kiefer Sherwood, the memo kicked up interest in whether Hughes was available, too.
Quinn Hughes notches goal on the power playQuinn Hughes notches goal on the power play
“It’s there. These guys are human,” the coach said. “They can feel it. It can affect a locker room.”
It was clear the Canucks could not wait any longer to trade Hughes. Through his decades as an NHL general manager — winning Stanley Cups with Carolina and Pittsburgh — Rutherford had become known for making deals well ahead of the NHL trade deadline to create his own market. This was no different.
“In order to not get painted into the corner with one team, we felt that trying to do a deal in December or the first half of January would give us the most leverage,” Rutherford said after the trade.
Rutherford said Allvin asked him to take the lead on fielding trade offers, as the general manager “had a lot on his plate.”
The Canucks knew they couldn’t whiff on a Hughes trade. The consensus from sources around the NHL was that the Canucks were seeking a young center with NHL experience that could play in their top six, and a young defenseman, preferably left-handed. Teams knew a first-round pick would have to be part of any package as well.
The initial focus for Vancouver was trading Hughes to a team in the Eastern Conference “to get him closer to his brothers and family,” according to Rutherford. So talks began with the team in closest proximity to Jack and Luke — the one on which they play.
“The process probably started a couple of weeks ago with the understanding that New Jersey was the potential team,” Rutherford said.
The Devils were thought to be an inevitability in the Hughes derby. All three brothers stated that they wanted to play together in the NHL. Rutherford reiterated that was Quinn’s goal during news conference last season that also helped spark months of trade speculation surrounding his captain.
“Honestly, I was a little surprised that [Rutherford] would be so forthcoming with that,” Jack Hughes told ESPN in September.
The belief is that Vancouver would have wanted a package of 21-year-old defenseman Simon Nemec, drafted second overall in 2022; 24-year-old center Dawson Mercer; KHL defenseman Anton Silayev, drafted 10th overall in 2024; and a first-round pick. That package was crafted with the understanding that Hughes was likely to sign an extension with the Devils.
The problem with the Devils’ trade bid wasn’t necessarily the bid itself — although, ultimately, Minnesota’s offer was better — but in their inability to clear the necessary salary cap space to take on Hughes’ $7.85 million AAV.
The Devils have 14 players with some level of trade protection on their current contracts. That includes veteran forward Ondrej Palat and defenseman Dougie Hamilton, two players they could have shipped out to facilitate the trade.
“They handed out some regrettable trade protection in the past and it handcuffed them,” one NHL executive said.
The Canucks heard from plenty of NHL teams. Some dropped out quickly when the asking price came into focus.
The Carolina Hurricanes, as they have with every big-name player available over the past few years, made their pitch. But their trade package wasn’t in the ballpark of Minnesota’s, according to an NHL source.
The Buffalo Sabres reportedly made their pitch, desperately seeking a path back to the playoffs for the first time since 2011. Forward Zach Benson is a player the Canucks have coveted since they passed on him in favor of defenseman Tom Willander in the 2023 draft. Benson and defenseman Bowen Byram would have been the primary pieces in any deal that saw Hughes end up in Buffalo.
There was some reading between the lines when Hughes spoke after his debut with the Wild on Sunday, and praised the all-in aspect of Guerin’s offer.