The hockey world is still buzzing about the Quinn Hughes trade from the Vancouver Canucks to the Minnesota Wild. For those that missed it, the Canucks sent Hughes to the Wild for Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren, and a 2026 first-round pick.
But Wild GM Bill Guerin stepped up to the plate because he knew if he missed out on acquiring a player like that, he would regret it, given Minnesota is in a position to win right now.
“Because it’s Quinn Hughes,” Guerin told the media in Minnesota. “And I don’t know what the right moment is, but if you wait for it, you’re gonna miss it. …When it’s a player of this caliber, the right time’s always now.”
Guerin learned from his experience as an assistant GM with the Pittsburgh Penguins, under the current Canucks President of Hockey Operations and former Penguins GM, Jim Rutherford. He saw that Rutherford was always aggressive, trying to make his team better and go all-in to win while in Pittsburgh.
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As Guerin noted multiple times on Saturday during his press conference, Rutherford and Canucks GM Patrik Allvin like to get straight to the point; that is why he came out swinging with his initial offer. And as Guerin reiterated, like so many good general managers around have, the first-round pick or any draft pick is not going to help the Wild now. They are coming in five years if they ever come.
So Guerin learned a lot from working with Rutherford, which is why he was not messing around when he called a week before the trade went down. While he was behind the eight ball as other teams had laid out their best offers, his initial offer had to be the best because there was no room to negotiate.
As Elliotte Friedman wrote in his 32 Thoughts blog and stated on the podcast, former GM Brian Burke said in 2005, after not realizing Joe Thornton’s availability until it was too late: If you snooze, you lose. And when Burke called about Thornton, the Bruins told him it was too late. Guerin almost made the same mistake if he hadn’t been encouraged to do so by the assistant GM.
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As previously mentioned, when does a player of Quinn Hughes’s ilk become available? It hardly ever happens. The Minnesota Wild are in win-now mode, given they are out of the Ryan Suter and Zach Parise buyouts, so they were going big game hunting.
“Bill Guerin has made it extremely clear, like could not be clearer, that he is going big game hunting this season and he wants to do it quick, and this was the one big game piece on the market right now,” Michael Russo said on the Sekeres and Price Podcast.
Over the last couple of years, the Wild have been below the actual salary cap, $14 million in the hole, due to those buyouts. But when he first came to Minnesota, Guerin knew it was a necessary move for the team to be successful later on. There was going to be a few years of pain after the initial cap relief, but Guerin was biding his time to make things happen.
Acquiring the necessary draft capital allowed him to make this move. This, in turn, showed Kirill Kaprizov, who just signed an eight-year deal at $17 million a season, that he made the right choice to commit to the Wild long-term. But there is a nice young nucleus with Joel Eriksson-Ek, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Kaprizov, Jesper Wallstedt, and Filip Gustavsson.
The Minnesota Wild are in a tough Central Division, with the Colorado Avalanche running away with things. Still, with the addition of Quinn Hughes, they add the second-best defenseman in the NHL. It gives them a chance to make a deep playoff run. The Wild haven’t been to the Conference Final since 2003. They haven’t won a playoff round since 2015, when they reached the second round.
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Regardless of whether they can extend Quinn Hughes or not, the Wild have shown him they are willing to do what is necessary to win. Though there is a belief it could happen, there are no guarantees right now.
“The one thing I made certain about, under no circumstances could we guarantee a contract extension with anyone,” Pat Brisson, Quin Hughes’s agent, told the media after the trade on Friday.
Quinn Hughes is eligible to sign an extension on July 1, 2026. His next contract could be just as groundbreaking as Kirill Kaprizov’s was. Again, the new CBA rules kick in on September 16th, so the Wild are in the driver’s seat as the only team that can sign him to an eight-year deal with heavy bonuses, front-loaded payments, etc.
Again, nothing is guaranteed for the Wild and Hughes, which means another trade could come next year if there are no indications he will stay. However, given that Hughes and his agent are open-minded and everything is on the table, the Wild have a good chance to prove this is the destination for him, especially given how aggressive Bill Guerin is in making moves.
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