It was supposed to be written in the stars. The New Jersey Devils won the NHL Draft Lottery in 2019, giving them the right to draft Jack Hughes. After a rocky start, Hughes becomes an absolute superstar. He is the man to build around on the team. In 2022, the Devils get the fourth-overall pick after a rough season, but they’re lucky to see Luke Hughes fall to them, and they get to connect the brothers in Jersey.
Hughes has already signed an eight-year deal that has become one of the best in the sport. His brother signed a seven-year deal during training camp. They make $8 million and $9 million, respectively.
The reason the Devils paid the price they did for Luke Hughes is that the assumption was that it would eventually bring them Quinn Hughes. The former Norris Trophy winner and top-two defenseman in the world was on the outs in Vancouver. While he was the captain there, two terrible years led by the dissatisfaction with leadership led to trades of J.T. Miller, Bo Horvat, Vasily Podkolzin, and others.
Now, it led to the trade of their captain. Quinn Hughes moved to his new home on Friday night. While reports say the Devils were in talks, he instead went to the Minnesota Wild. Devils fans were in shock, and the NHL as a whole was trying to track down how this all went down.
For Hughes, the Wild traded superstar rookie defenseman Zeev Buium, former first-round pick Liam Ohgren, young center Marco Rossi, and a 2026 first-round pick. Essentially, they traded four first-round picks for Quinn Hughes.
Hughes and his agent Pat Brisson made it clear to teams that they would not be traded with any guarantees for what happens on July 1st, but the feeling might be changing for the eldest Hughes brother.
His first game with the Wild couldn’t have gone better. He scored a goal, and they won 6-2. That’s the type of win to keep the honeymoon phase going, and his comments after the game showed that this experience, and the gumption of Wild GM Bill Guerin to go for it, might open the door wide open to a life in Minnesota.
"I'll be extremely open minded (about staying in Minnesota long term). They got an amazing core... Minnesota being so close to Michigan and just the state of hockey and the passion here. Just seeing how the fans reacted to me as well in warmups. And obviously, I got all the time for Billy (Guerin) for sacking up like he did. How he valued me. There are other teams that could have thrown in certain packages like that too, but at the end of the day, they didn't want to do that... I'll remember that and it means a lot to me that Billy did that. "Quinn Hughes, Wild defenseman
The words are jarring to read. When you listen to them, it’s clearly a guy responding to a very specific question, but he did give some details that show what he’s feeling. Is he talking about the Devils specifically? It’s hard to tell. He could be talking about the Philadelphia Flyers, who reportedly left talks as soon as they heard what the Canucks were looking for. Hughes’s former head coach, Rick Tochett, is currently in Philadelphia. Maybe he was talking about Detroit, which didn’t make the big move, either.
Either way, nobody is going to be happy with what Hughes said. Guerin will give him a blank check this offseason to sign there long term. Hughes can only get an eight-year deal this offseason after the changes to the collective bargaining agreement. So, if Minnesota is committed to keeping him, they could use that as hardball.
While the context takes a little out of the sails of the quote, it’s still something he’s thinking about right after the trade. This is much different than “no guarantee of a contract extension” that we heard about right after the trade. Will Quinn Hughes come to New Jersey? There is as much doubt about that as ever.