The dog days of the NHL offseason are behind us, with the season right around the corner. Once again, defenseman Quinn Hughes is in the spotlight. This time it is for different, but obvious reasons.
See, Quinn Hughes was eligible for an extension on July 1st, 2026. Many people were shocked that a deal wasn’t signed that day. Most assumed it would get done, but the experts were wrong.
Again, given the way the salary cap and player salaries were rising, Quinn Hughes would have done a massive disservice to himself by signing early. So with training camps approaching, there is concern, mostly from the fan base, that he may not want to sign an extension with the Minnesota Wild.
Again, the caveat and lingering question is whether playing with his brothers matters more to him than anything else. Is it more important to him to win with his family as he did at the Olympics than to do it on his own? Given how long this has taken, that might be the case.
Remember, last offseason it was about Quinn Hughes wanting to play with his brothers after former Vancouver Canucks President of Hockey Operations and current consultant Jim Rutherford told the media that the defenseman told him that during the 2024-25 season.
Quinn Hughes made it clear long before Rutherford spoke to the media that he was not extending in Vancouver. He was tired of the team’s dysfunction and turmoil and wanted to return to the United States.
So the question wasn’t if, but when, the New Jersey Devils would acquire Quinn Hughes from the Vancouver Canucks. Rutherford kept former Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald in the loop as well.
According to sources, the Devils and Canucks were going to make a trade, and Quinn Hughes would flip locker rooms on the weekend of December 13th and 14th, when the Canucks came to New Jersey. There was a reason why Quinn Hughes had his stuff in his brother Jack Hughes’s car when he got the call about the trade.
However, the Devils couldn’t make the cap space work before making the trade, with players like Dougie Hamilton and others using their trade protection to veto any move the team wanted to make. So with Fitzgerald’s hands tied, the Minnesota Wild and Bill Guerin swooped in to acquire Quinn Hughes.
As Quinn Hughes said himself, Bill Guerin took a chance on him and stepped up to the plate to acquire his services, and he will be grateful he did. The Wild were able to get out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2015, defeating the Dallas Stars before falling to the Colorado Avalanche in Round 2.
However, despite his contributions, the question remained: would Quinn Hughes sign an extension with the Minnesota Wild? When the defenseman met with the media at the end of the season, he said he was open to the idea, but understood it was a business and that he needed to discuss it with his agent and see what the Wild wanted compared to what he wanted.
However, the Wild have taken a step back with the losses on their roster. Quinn Hughes sees that. He has also seen Cale Makar take $20.4 million on an AAV over an eight-year deal and become one of the highest-paid players in NHL history, as Two Guys and Hockey Talk’s own Evan Renaerts said he would be before the announcement last Friday.
That, along with Leo Carlsson’s $18 million AAV, Mackin Celebrini’s $18.8 million, and the market shifting in favour of players. However, as Wild GM Bill Guerin made the media rounds on Monday at the Minnesota State Fair, he felt that what another player was making wasn’t going to impact Quinn Hughes’s decision in Minnesota.
“Quinn might be after different things. He’s a different guy,” Guerin said on the Chad Hartman Show. “He is not Cale Makar. He’s a different personality. He has different things in his life that matter to him. So, who knows what he’s really going to want in the end?”
However, while a short-term deal of three years at $18 million or $19 million a season is not out of the question, word is he still wants to play with his brothers, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Now, Wild GM Bill Guerin hasn’t tipped his hand one way or another, saying it is a negotiation and they were in a similar situation last year with Kirill Kaprizov. Except last year, Guerin and Wild Owner Craig Leipold spoke adamantly about giving Kaprizov whatever he wanted when they spoke with the media.
This time, Guerin has learned not to do that. Before the process started, Leipold felt the two parties would get a deal done, and the Wild would extend Quinn Hughes. And they still may, as we have seen one phone call changes everything.
While Guerin remains confident, as he should, because he is the one in the room negotiating the deal with Quinn Hughes’s agent Pat Brisson and speaking to the player himself.
“I’m confident. That’s the luxury I have of being on the inside,” Guerin said on Judd’s Hockey Show. “There’s always the other side of it. I can be confident, you can be insecure, you just have to work through the process of the negotiating, figuring out what the player wants, what it will take to keep him here, make him happy enough here, all these different things, and to be honest, as I said, we have a good relationship and we have good communication going back and forth.”
But the tone has shifted from being close to a deal to being very optimistic, to nothing new to report, and to it being a negotiation, and these things take time. The team and fans want the player back. But it comes down to what Quinn Hughes wants.
Maybe Bill Guerin knows what the player wants to do, but will not go over the Rutherford by saying it outright. It is a situation worth watching because if the puck drops on the season and he isn’t signed, the noise will only get louder about the Hughes brothers playing together.
