When the Minnesota Wild won the Quinn Hughes sweepstakes in December, it landed like a jolt around the league. The New Jersey Devils, with both Jack and Luke Hughes already in the organization, seemed like the obvious landing spot for the Vancouver Canucks defenseman. Instead, Minnesota made the move, and Hughes went west.
The Wild sent back a massive package that included their 2026 first-round draft pick, which became Adam Novotny, along with Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren and Marco Rossi. In return, Minnesota got the kind of player who changes the shape of a team right away. Hughes delivered 53 points in 48 games and helped the Wild to their best playoff finish in 11 years.
That naturally raises the question: what if New Jersey had gotten there first?
According to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, after the Devils failed to complete a deal with Vancouver, the Canucks were asking for Simon Nemec, Dawson Mercer, Anton Silayev and a first-round pick. New Jersey also would have had to open up more than $7 million in cap space to make the move work.
That price tag would have stung. Nemec and Mercer were the most immediate losses the Devils would have faced, and both would have been painful to move.
Nemec, in particular, was the kind of piece the Devils ideally could have paired with Hughes, letting him develop alongside an elite defender. But Nemec was later moved to the Flames in the offseason, which leaves New Jersey without either star blue-liner.
Mercer would have left a real hole in the scoring, even if Hughes could have helped cover some of it.
Still, with Quinn Hughes on the table, the Devils would have had to seriously consider it. Players like that don’t come around often.
Even so, landing Hughes would not have fixed everything. New Jersey finished seventh in the Metropolitan Division last season and never got close to a wild card spot.
A minus-24 goal differential is not something one defenseman erases on his own, no matter how good he is. Goaltending was a major problem, and Hughes’ defensive impact wouldn’t have solved the whole mess.
And even if the Devils had somehow made the playoffs, Hughes alone would not have been enough to stop the Carolina Hurricanes from reaching the Stanley Cup finals in the East.
Where the trade would have mattered most is the future. Hughes was poised to sign as part of the deal, and that would have given the Devils a true franchise piece to build around. A return to the East Coast to play with his brothers would have made sense for Hughes, and a long-term contract would have made just as much sense for New Jersey.
Instead, the Devils missed on Hughes, missed the playoffs, and almost certainly lost.
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One Bizarre Ruling Changed Devils History Forever
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The fallout from that case reached far beyond a single transaction. New Jersey came out of it with a cornerstone defenseman who helped define the franchises identity, and the whole episode became part of the reason the NHL eventually tightened its offer-sheet rules. For Devils fans, it remains one of those bizarre what-if moments in league history, the kind that still hangs over how a dynasty can be traced back to a decision no one saw coming. [Read more 🡒]