Canucks move quickly to make most out of Hughes trade in deal with Wild

Faced with a difficult situation, Jim Rutherford did not want to wait until the Vancouver Canucks were out of options with their captain, defenseman Quinn Hughes, before they traded the 2023-24 Norris Trophy winner to the Minnesota Wild on Friday.

The Canucks missed the playoffs in 2025, Hughes is due to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2026-27 season, and he has two brothers -- Jack and Luke -- already playing together for the New Jersey Devils.

Rutherford said the indication he received was that it was "highly unlikely" that Hughes would sign another contract with the Canucks.

"In order to give us any leverage and not get painted into the corner with one team and wait till the trade deadline or wait till next summer, we felt that trying to do a deal in December or the first half of January would give us the most leverage, and so the process probably started a couple of weeks ago with understanding that New Jersey was the potential team, and trying to at least get Quinn into the Eastern time zone to meet his needs, being closer to his brothers and family," said Rutherford, Vancouver's president of hockey operations. "And through that, there were different teams that inquired and we talked to and made offers, and then out of the blue, in the last five to seven days, get a call from Minnesota, from (Wild general manager) Billy Guerin saying, 'I'm reading all this stuff. Is there any chance of us getting in?’ And I was the one talking to Billy, and I said to Billy that feel free to jump in but the odds are against you, based on Quinn's criteria."

Guerin jumped all the way in, and the Canucks came away with forwards Marco Rossi and Liam Ohgren, defenseman Zeev Buium -- all first-round picks between 2020 and 2024 -- and a first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.

So while the Devils were understandably the front-runner with the opportunity to team Hughes with his brothers, Minnesota's late offer was an over-the-top package Rutherford could not refuse.

“When Minnesota came along I started talking to them, and they made their offer and talked through it, it was clearly the best one,” Rutherford said. “And so then there was a process of letting the other teams have another chance, seeing if Quinn had interest in going to Minnesota at this point in time, and got to that point and he thought at this time Minnesota would be a good fit for this year. Where it goes from there, that’s up to everybody else. It’s out of our hands.”

But for now, Hughes -- who signed a six-year, $47.1 million contract ($7.85 million average annual value) with Vancouver on Oct. 3, 2021 -- was fine with the fit in Minnesota. That allowed Rutherford to add a significant amount of young talent, with more to come, now with two first-round picks in the 2026 NHL Draft.

“I believe that we’ve been in a rebuild here for a little bit, and we’ve been able to acquire some good young players, but this move today gives us some really good young players,” Rutherford said. “It may not change our team in the next few months or even this season, but this doesn’t have to be a full-blown rebuild where it’s going to take five or seven years.

“We keep going the direction we’re going to go on. We’re going to get a really good player in June, and this thing can turn for the Canucks, certainly within the next couple of years.”

Rossi, 24, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 9 pick in the 2020 draft and is in his third full NHL season. He has 13 points (four goals, nine assists) in 17 games. He's in the first season of a three-year, $15 million contract ($5 million AAV) he signed with the Wild on Aug. 22, 2025.

“We tried to get Rossi for a long time now, because we knew we needed help at center,” Rutherford said. “The young defenseman [Buium] is a special, special player, and he's got such a high ceiling going forward, and of course, with Ohgren, he's another first-round pick that's still developing and should become a regular player for the Canucks at some point in time.”

Ohgren, 21, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 19 pick in the 2022 draft and has yet to register a point in 18 games this season.

Buium, 20, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 12 pick in the 2024 draft and has 14 points (three goals, 11 assists) in 31 games.

“We’re excited about the youth we got in return here,” Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin said. “We’re kind of retooling, rebuilding, and one thing we always try to do here is we try to bring in players that are 25 and younger and will continue to grow here. We have a lot of younger players in our lineup up here due to injuries that might have been forced a little bit early than we projected, but they’ve done really well.”

Allvin is particularly excited with the acquisition of Buium, who is a proven winner.

The San Diego, California native won gold with the United States at the Under-18 World Championship in 2023, the World Junior Championship in 2024 and 2025, and the World Championship in 2025.

Buium also helped the University of Denver win the NCAA national championship in 2024.

The offensive defenseman made his NHL debut in the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season in the first round best-of-7 series between the Wild and the Vegas Golden Knights.

Buium played in the first four games of the series, registering an assist, before Minnesota was eliminated in six games by Vegas.

“Zeev is a young defenseman that won two World Juniors and a national championship in Denver,” Allvin said. “He’s an extremely talented offensive-minded defenseman that in a very short time experienced the playoffs last year when he was done in Denver and stepping right into the National Hockey League and playing for Minnesota and then following up this year where I think he looks stronger, more composed.”

In Buium, the Canucks hope they found an eventual replacement for Hughes, although those are big skates to fill.

“Our scouting staff that followed him there (in Minnesota) are excited on the path that’s coming,” Allvin said. “He’s still very young and we know that for a defenseman it takes some time, but he definitely has the ability to quarterback a power play here and we’re really excited to work with him here.”

The Canucks (11-17-3) are eighth in the Pacific Division and open a five-game road trip against the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center on Sunday (12:30 p.m. ET; MSGSN, NHLN, SN).

And while this wasn’t in the direction Vancouver wanted to go after finishing first in the Pacific in 2023-24 and losing to the Edmonton Oilers in the second round of the playoffs, the Canucks have reason to be optimistic about their future, despite trading forward J.T. Miller to the New York Rangers on Jan. 31, and Hughes to the Minnesota on Friday.

“I thought we had a great team, we had a great run, we were very excited where we were and unfortunately things happen,” Allvin said. “You have to be able to adapt, adjust, retool and I think that’s what we started with last year with the trade and unfortunately, today was another step in that direction. We are trying to get the new wave, the new younger players in here and start to continue to build a championship team.”

NHL.com Independent Correspondent Kevin Woodley contributed to this report