Quinn Hughes has a way of stirring up old feelings, and his arrival in Minnesota may have done the same to one of the Wild’s earliest rivalries.
The Wild and Canucks have spent years mostly out of the spotlight with each other. Realignment in 2013 helped cool things off, and the current playoff setup makes a postseason collision feel unlikely.
But the trade that sent Hughes from Vancouver to Minnesota in December gives this matchup a fresh edge, especially with the Canucks on the schedule again on Oct. 25.
That’s a notable twist for a rivalry that traces back to the Wild’s early days. Minnesota entered the league in 2000 and spent those first seasons in the Northwest Division, where Vancouver was part of the regular grind along with Calgary, Edmonton and Colorado. A lot of those games were tucked away late at night for fans, but the tone changed in a big way in the 2003 Western Conference semifinals.
Minnesota had already pulled off a 3-1 comeback against Colorado in the first round, then found itself in another 3-1 hole against a Vancouver team that “was unquestionably Vancouver’s best since the 1993-94 club that reached the Stanley Cup Final,” according to Alex Hoegler of The Canuck Way.
The series only got spicier from there. After Game 4, Todd Bertuzzi reportedly passed a group of Wild fans waiting to buy Game 6 tickets and told them not to bother because the series would be over after Game 5, per Kyle Anway of Hockey Wilderness. Minnesota answered with a 7-2 win on Vancouver’s ice in Game 5, then rolled 5-1 in Game 6 to force a winner-take-all Game 7 north of the border.
The Wild trailed 2-0 in that deciding game, then scored four straight to win the series and reach the Western Conference Finals for the only time in franchise history. The bad blood didn’t end there. Wild head coach Jacques Lemaire refused to shake Marc Crawford’s hand after the series, and Canucks GM Brian Burke dismissed Minnesota as “a cult” because of the discipline in Lemaire’s neutral zone trap.
The fans kept it going, too, trading jabs long before social media made that kind of thing routine.
Now Hughes brings a new layer to all of it. Minnesota is thrilled with the move because he helped turn the team into a Stanley Cup contender, and general manager Bill Guerin is surely hoping Hughes likes his new home enough to sign a lucrative multi-year extension. Even if that happens, the Canucks will still be the team that can give this story some extra bite.
Marco Rossi could be part of that, too. The Wild took him ninth overall in the 2020 draft, expected him to grow into a top-six role, and instead kept him in Iowa early in his pro career before later dropping him to the fourth line during Minnesota’s 2025 playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights. The two sides later agreed to a three-year extension the following summer, but Rossi was the most NHL-ready piece in the Hughes deal and could have a little more edge when he sees his old team.
Liam Ohgren and Zeev Buium were also sent to Vancouver in the trade. Both were former first-round picks by the Wild, though Ohgren never managed to win a spot on the NHL roster and lost a preseason battle to a motivated Marcus Johansson last fall.
Buium’s path was different. He has the kind of skill that could eventually put him among the league’s top offensive defensemen, but his timeline didn’t line up with where Minnesota was headed while he was still adjusting to life in the NHL as a teenager.
Even so, he didn’t sound bitter about leaving. He chose No. 24 as a tribute to former defensive partner Zach Bogosian and told The Athletic’s Michael Russo, “You can’t be disappointed when you get traded for Quinn Hughes.”
The rivalry may not be ready for a full-blown playoff reboot anytime soon, but Hughes has already given it something it hasn’t had in years: a reason to feel alive again.
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