Pressure is building in Minnesota around Quinn Hughes, and that’s a strange sentence for Canucks fans to read.
The pain of watching Vancouver’s former captain and franchise’s all-time best defenceman move on has eased over the last eight months, mostly because the Canucks have leaned into a rebuild under a totally new management group. The fact that Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, and Liam Ohgren have flashed in Canucks colours, along with the addition of draft-day steal Adam Novotny, has softened the blow even more.
Still, the real twist is this: how would Canucks fans react if Hughes winds up walking away from the Wild?
Empathy, relief, vindication - all of it would make sense.
Hughes had a strong first season in Minnesota, helping the Wild get past the Dallas Stars in the postseason before they were eliminated by the Colorado Avalanche in Round 2. After that run ended, Wild owner Craig Leopold sounded certain the team would keep him around.
“We are going to re-sign him,” Leopold told Minnesota Public Radio back on June 24. “The question will be for how long.
We would like to go as long as we could. He will probably want it to be a little shorter, shorter being maybe three years.
We hopefully will end up at five.”
A month later, The Athletic’s Michael Russo reported that Minnesota was close to meeting with Hughes about a new contract.
Believe Bill Guerin will be meeting with Quinn Hughes and his camp in Michigan today/this week. As we've long reported, Wild want to go 5-8 years (7-year max term after Sept. 16 in new CBA). 3-year extension still makes most sense for Quinn so he can align with Jack's deal in NJ
- Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) July 28, 2026
At that point, the whole thing looked headed in the right direction.
But the longer this drags on, the more uneasy things feel in Minnesota.
“It has surprised me a little bit about how long this has taken with Hughes,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said recently on the 32 Thoughts podcast.
Earlier in August, Friedman projected Hughes would land a three-year deal with Minnesota worth $18 million per season. Now, though, the closer the regular season gets, the more he expects the pressure to rise.
“I’ll be concerned if it’s not done at the start of the season,” Friedman said. “I’ll be surprised based on what I predicted.”
“I don’t think there have been a lot of talks recently between Hughes and the Wild. I don’t get that sense.”
Friedman also pointed to the possibility that Hughes and Colorado Avalanche defenceman Cale Makar are both playing a game of contract chicken.
Both players are in the final years of their contracts. And with the cap climbing, plus the recent bloated deals for Bowen Byram, Macklin Celebrini and Leo Carlsson, it’s easy to see how Hughes and Makar could end up chasing contracts that push toward $20 million per season.
Makar, though, is a different case. He’s a lifelong Avalanche player, has already won a Conn Smythe Trophy with the team, and gets to skate beside Nathan MacKinnon. It’s tough to picture him leaving.
Hughes doesn’t have that same built-in certainty. He has something else entirely: the pull of his brothers in New Jersey.
“Would it be fun to play with those guys at some point? Of course,” Hughes said back in September when asked about Jack’s comment about the brothers playing together.
“I think if you guys have brothers, you guys would say the same thing. But we do have contracts.”
That clock is ticking now. With unrestricted free agency less than a year away and the regular season opening in late September, Bill Guerin is going to feel the heat to get something done.
In Other News...
Canucks Are Losing A Familiar Part Of The Rogers Arena Experience
A familiar game-night presence around Rogers Arena is moving on. Tom Fleming, the Canucks in-house DJ, announced on Instagram that he will not be back for next season after five years with the organization, ending a run that became part of the buildings regular rhythm for fans coming through the doors.
Fleming originally earned the job in 2021 through a competition and has since carved out a broader path in music, including a residency in Bali, Indonesia, where he has been performing during the offseason. His time behind the console overlapped with multiple coaching changes and the clubs close call in the 2023-24 Western Conference Finals, which made his departure feel like the latest shift in a stretch of constant change around the team. [Read more 🡒]
Canucks Make A Quiet Move That Could Matter In 2027
The Canucks have quietly added another name to their front office, hiring Sean Finn as an amateur scout with an eye toward the international talent pipeline. Finn brings a long background in player development across the Russian hockey landscape, including work with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, Avangard Omsk and Kunlun Red Star, which gives Vancouver another set of eyes in a market that often requires more than just standard viewings and reports.
For a team always trying to stay ahead in the draft, the move looks aimed well beyond the next season. Finns experience is expected to help the Canucks evaluate Russian prospects for the 2027 NHL Draft, a long-range investment that reflects how much of todays roster building happens years before a player ever puts on an NHL sweater. [Read more 🡒]
Red Wings Fans Wont Ignore This Dylan Larkin Trade Buzz
Trade chatter around Dylan Larkin is starting to look like more than offseason noise, and it lands in a season where a handful of big names are already being cast as possible movers. The discussion has spread well beyond Detroit, with Elias Pettersson, Kirill Marchenko, Ryan OReilly and Connor Hellebuyck all getting mention as players who could find themselves in the mix during the 2026-27 window, a reminder of how quickly the NHL rumor mill can turn established stars into hypothetical trade pieces.
For Vancouver, Petterssons inclusion is the part that naturally grabs attention, even if the whole exercise remains speculative. The Canucks have lived with constant scrutiny around their core, and any list of prominent trade candidates is going to invite questions about fit, leverage and timing, but for now it is still just that - a list, not a transaction. The bigger takeaway is how many teams are being pulled into the same kind of long-range roster debate, with interest reported in some cases but no actual deal anywhere in sight. [Read more 🡒]