When it was the Minnesota Wild who won the Quinn Hughes sweepstakes back in December, it was a shock across the league that the New Jersey Devils, the home of both Jack and Luke Hughes, weren't the final destination for the Vancouver Canucks defender.
Instead, the Minnesota Wild swept in with an offer the Vancouver Canucks couldn't refuse. Hughes headed out to Minnesota, while the Canucks acquired the Wild's 2026 first-round draft pick (which ended up being Adam Novotny), Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren, and Marco Rossi. This amounted to essentially four first overall picks. With the Wild, Hughes put up 53 points in 48 games and helped the team to their best playoff finish in 11 years.
What if the New Jersey Devils had gotten their hands on Hughes first and traded for him like they should have in the first place?
What would Quinn Hughes cost the Devils?
After the Devils weren't able to complete a trade with the Canucks, ESPN's Greg Wyshynski reported that the Canucks were looking to get Simon Nemec, Dawson Mercer, Anton Silayev, and a first-round pick. In order to get Hughes, the Devils would have also needed to clear over $7 million in cap space.
Nemec and Mercer would have arguably been the biggest immediate loss for the Devils, but a loss they should have been willing to take for the likes of Quinn Hughes. Ideally, for the Devils, they would have been able to have Nemec learn from Hughes, but with Nemec leaving in a trade with the Flames in the off-season, the Devils now don't have either star defender. Mercer would have left a big gap in scoring that Hughes would have only partly been able to mend. Yet with the prospect of Quinn Hughes on the table, is anyone really safe?
What if the Devils made the trade for Quinn Hughes?
How much would have really changed if the Devils had gotten Quinn Hughes? Would it have solved all of their woes? Unlikely.
The Devils finished seventh in the Metropolitan Division last season, well outside of any chance at a wild card slot in the playoffs. The -24 goal differential from last season certainly wouldn't have been fixed by one single player. Goaltending was a big issue, and even with the defensive excellence that Hughes brings, he couldn't have saved the entire season.
Even if they had made the playoffs this season, no single player would have been enough to stave off the Carolina Hurricanes from reaching the Stanley Cup finals in the East.
The biggest impact that getting Hughes from the Canucks would have had on the Devils is in the long-term future of the team. With Hughes poised to sign as part of the trade, the real outcome would have been the ability for the Devils to build around him. Coming back to the East Coast to play with his brothers would have been the perfect case for Hughes, and a long-term contract with the star Defender would have been the perfect case for the Devils.
In the end, the Devils missed out on Hughes, missed the playoffs, and almost certainly lost GM Tom Fitzgerald in the process. It's unclear, however, if they've missed the Quinn Hughes train permanently. Will the eldest Hughes brother re-sign in Minnesota, or will he end up in New Jersey after all?
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