The Hockey PDOcast - Breaking Down the Quinn Hughes Trade to Minnesota

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to get into as many layers of this weekend's Quinn Hughes trade as they can over the course of an hour, ranging from how the Canucks got here as an organization, the acquisition cost and timing of the deal, to why the Wild were the ones to go for it and how he'll fit in Minnesota.  If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.Cast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dmitra Filippovich, and joining me, as always, on a Sunday. My good buddy, Thomas Trans, Tom, what's going on, man? Dmitri, what a weekend? I mean, what a weekend? what else can we say it was a tectonic weekend we saw Stan Bowman

how did the Oilers first of all I know everyone wants to talk Quinn Hughes how did the Oilers find a way to lose a trade in which they upgraded a net honestly it's stunning I mean how is that possible I even liked the Spencer Stasney part of it but I mean

Pittsburgh's going to end up netting what multiple seconds for Tristan Jari by the time this is all said and done. And given the term on that contract, given his performance, given the fact that he was clearly their third best goaltender, I mean, it's shocking. And if Pittsburgh rehabilitates Skinner and finds a way out of that deal before the deadline we won't be shocked, you know they're getting a second at least for Kulak.

And honestly, I just have no idea what the Oilers are doing. And honestly, there's no amount that they can pay for a marginal upgrade in net that I should hate, that I should even think twice about or anyone else. And yet they found a way to lose a trade to upgrade a net. I never would have believed it. If you told me that, if you told me these two things 10 days ago, I would have said, wow, it's far less likely that I pan an oiler's trade to upgrade on Stuart Skinner than that Quinn Hughes ends up a member of the Minnesota Wild. before Christmas, right? I mean, honestly, I really do think that that was the more shocking trade,

but it didn't matter as much. So let's pivot to what the people want to hear about. Well, on. No, here's the thing. First off, it's amazing that the Oilers made this trade, and I think everyone in the hockey world was like, finally, we have some trades to talk about. It was so quiet on that front.

And then that lasted for about six to eight hours, and then we immediately had to pivot because there was a bigger deal for us to discuss. I think for the Oilers, as long as they can get 900 goal-tending, as we've seen from them in the past couple of games, now that they're firing on all cylinders offensively. I think the price ultimately doesn't matter.

Maybe that's a discussion for another day. The penguins are going through the most ethical tank, I think I've ever seen right now, where they're going up by three goals every single night and then somehow finding a way to blow it, giving you entertainment value, being competitive, but losing points along the way.

Apologies to Spencer Stasty. We're not going to be breaking down his fit on the Oilers today, although I'm sure in OIA you and I, we will be discussing it at some point. He is fun. He is fun, though. I'm a fan. I had been planning so many topics this week before Friday. Over the course of the week, I'm jotting stuff down.

I'm like, man, we're going to talk so much about the Islanders and Max Shabanov. I got so many notes. They keep beating the lightning. They keep beating all these good teams going through my list. And then these trades happen and the Quinn Hughes on obviously in particular. And we're going to devote the full extent of today's show to that entirely. I'm so excited about it. You know, peek into my process.

I decide to take Friday night off. and then I go to bed and then I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like oh my God I got to think more about this trade

and so I'm just sitting there in the dark on my phone on my notes app just jotting down like whatever's coming into my mind about angles

to discuss with this trade with you and I was just sitting up for like an hour and a half doing that and then I woke up the next day and I'm looking at it

and there was some good stuff in there some of it was just complete gibberish and I had to just throw it out but we're going to get into the stuff that made it past

the cutting process we're going to do our full breakdown treatment here the way we've done in the past with ranting in with kachuk two of the most recent deals of this magnitude our listeners are excited as well uh there's anticipation growing in the discord for this they wanted an emergency podcast i said we got to wait tom's on the road we're going to wait till our sunday special and do this right you've got boots on the ground

covering the canucks during this five game road trip out east before the holidays as well so let's get into it i'm going to give you the floor here i've got so many different angles and stuff things that i want to get into uh breaking down this trade but you kick us off Give us the first sort of entryway here, and we're going to go from there. So, I mean, from a Canucks perspective, right? And I'll start there because obviously that's the team I spend the most time thinking about and covering. From a Connucks perspective, this is a terrible outcome overall.

And yet, you know, the return itself is optimized. Let's put it that way, right? If you're going to auction Quinn Hughes, and you're only really going to auction him to teams in the Eastern time zone, Minnesota being really one of the only Western teams that they would have sent him to, you're going to get a haul because everyone would love to have a player like Quinn Hughes on their team for good reason. I mean, we've spent so much time, or I've spent so much time covering this team, you know, sort of bisecting the Canucks between the Hughes minutes and the non-Hughes minutes over the years. you know, this team with Hughes on the ice has often performed like an elite side.

And this team without Hughes on the ice, the non-Hughes minutes, the dreaded non-Hughes minutes, I mean, have performed like one of the worst teams in hockey. And they're all non-Hughes minutes now. Now, one thing I'd say is I do think that this team had fallen beneath that level where they were somewhere between the 12th or 20th best team and capable of looking good when things went their way. and, you know, sad when things didn't. I think they truly landed at a level where they lacked so much credibility in terms of just like having NHL level players down the middle of their forward group that they are, I think the 30th, 31st or 32nd best team in hockey with or without Quinn Hughes.

I mean, without Quinn Hughes, I think they're even, I feel more strongly saying something like 31st or 32nd. And I know people have struggled with that because in the Vancouver, market. When you explain that to people, people will say, well, the 32nd place team doesn't usually have Quinn Hughes. The 32nd place team doesn't usually have a, you know, game stealer like Thatcher Demko when he's available or what have you. But I do think what 32nd looks like in the NHL is a little different today, right? And you look at Calgary, you look at San Jose, you look at Chicago, you look at Seattle. I mean, some of the teams that I think we could ultimately see end up

there, Vancouver too, and they're not your, you know, minus 50 goal differential through 30 games San Jose Sharks or some of those Anaheim ducks Greg Cronin era teams. I mean, there's parity in the middle of the NHL and it extends further, you know, down toward the bottom of the standings than it ever has before. Um, but, you know, I think the Canucks have fallen beneath that level. And so it made sense. Honestly, it made sense even in an expedited fashion with or without Quinn Hughes telling them that he wasn't going to extend and he clearly had, it made sense for them to consider something really significant to rejig what this looks like, to change up their timeline, to detonate what effectively was, you know, a failed rebuild.

And, you know, I don't know that they're seen that way because they had a couple playoff runs. So they've been given this sort of polite veneer conversationally where they're not talked about like Buffalo, where they're not talked about. this is a failed rebuild, right? This is a team that drafted five times in the top 10 between 2014 and 2019 and never even became a consistent playoff team for that effort and for a variety of reasons, which we can get into. But more than that, it's just like the Quinn Hughes trade is a decent return. It's a terrible outcome, a historically bad outcome for the Canucks franchise,

because it really does cement that the Jim Benning era rebuild and the talent accumulated during those years failed. It failed to launch. And now you have to pick up the pieces having not even had consistent playoff appearances, much less success in the ensuing half decade, which is painful. And yet, you know, Ziv Bumes, or Buem, excuse me, is a really nice player. I mean, that's the sort of, you know, one meaningful piece that you'd like to get. I think Marco Rossi is severely underrated because he plays like you, you want to say. six foot three, two hundred twenty pound center to play. He just happens to be, you know, six foot even and a buck 90.

And I think people underrate him accordingly. I think that could be a good buy low part of this mega deal from Vancouver perspective. I've always been a fan of Liam Ogren in terms of his, you know, plus tools across the board. He hasn't put it together. He's kind of trending to be a dime a dozen prospect at this point, but good American League production. And he's got some dog. I mean, yeah, that's a totally acceptable.

package. The point, though, that I'm trying to make here is the success of what Vancouver's done here will not be determined by whether or not they did well on the Hughes trade. It's going to be determined by all of the moves that they come next. It's going to be determined by whether or not they can reorient how they're thinking about this team from focusing on, like, well, we have needs at center. Well, we have needs at defense. Well, like they're always rearranging. We have these catastrophic needs on defense. So they trade Bo Horvatt and J.T. Miller to shore up their defense. And now they've fallen beneath a baseline level of functionality at center. I mean, it's all just this sort of reactionary mess because they've been so focused on building the best possible team

for the here and now and haven't done the more important work of buying low, selling high, you know, managing depreciating assets. The way that you have to, if you're going to accumulate the sort of talent that the contender tier teams do um anyway i'll kick it to you and we can get into the minnesota side but i think for vancouver it's like i think this deal is a perfectly fine outcome if you if you find yourself in a position where you absolutely have to trade quin hues yes the fact that they were there though is an indictment of the organization and it's also insufficient to be like well now i feel good about the future direction of the team right they have to be disciplined for years to sort of fix the sins of the last 14 that have caused them to bleed the sort of value

where, you know, a player like Hughes was looking around and saying, this isn't workable. Yeah, I got to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the return just because my expectations were so low based on everything we know historically about this organization. A lot of the reporting that came out leading up to this in terms of their prioritization or preference of players who could help right now, especially down the middle. And they got one of those in Marco Rossi, but obviously Z. William, is sort of the crown jewel of this and the thing that tilts it more in their favor than I would have expected. You were always going to lose a deal like this, right? Because players like this just

don't really become available. We've seen an Eric Carlson, for example, in the past, when it became clear he wasn't going to stay in Ottawa, get moved to San Jose. But even at that point, he was, what, 28 years old? He was already entering the final year of his deal. And he had pretty extensive injury history at that point. I think there were real questions about what kind of player he was going to be on that next deal he signed. None of that really applies to Hughes, who is cheaper, contractually has an extra year on his deal, is two years younger, and is that as absolute apex right now, despite what happened in Vancouver around him this season.

The timeline for me is something I want to pick your brain about, obviously, covering this team and then now being there, and I'm sure canvassing since Friday, because I certainly was not prepared for it to be resolved this quickly to the point where Harmon and I did a full show about this, kind of talking about landing spots and stuff on Friday afternoon and within a couple hours that already became outdated essentially. Why did this happen right now beyond just them getting a package they deemed acceptable and then wanted to just rip the band-aid off and move on and kind of get rid of this circus or this dark cloud that have been covering them after every game where they keep getting asked questions about this and it's clearly a miserable

situation for everyone involved, not just Hughes himself, but the team because I've seen it sort of speculated that they felt internally like their peak leverage moment was going to be this December, January type of area. And I thought that that leverage would still be maintained leading up to March, even in the summer, honestly, because you'd get closer to him becoming extension eligible. And so maybe you'd whittle down the number of teams who would be interested in acquiring him if it became clear he wasn't going to extend. And it was just a one-year deal rental, essentially. But the teams that he would extend with would presume up their offer at that point when it became a real possibility he'd be there for the next

eight years after next season and so they decided to pull the trigger and do it now on December what 12th or whatever as opposed to waiting the way I thought they might have initially yeah and I think there's a couple things at play here one that I know a little more solidly and one that I suspect and so let me let me start with what I know a little more solidly I think part of this is that you know this wasn't a normal trade of a guy who's not eligible for a no trade or no move clause at this point in his juncture, right, in his career sort of timeline. Like he hasn't sort of accumulated enough years, especially because he was a 10.2c black hole

player out of college burned that first year of his ELC but didn't accumulate a year towards unrestricted free agency. He's not eligible for no move or no trade protection. And yet, the Canucks didn't make this trade the way they could have in which Hughes and his representatives with CAA principally Papperson were out of the loop and not consulted on the trade. Hughes and his representatives worked with the Canucks. The Canucks sort of limited some of their suitors to send Hughes East to send Hughes closer to his family. You know, I think there was a great deal of effort put into, you know, doing this deal. I suppose, you know, there's a

handful in Rutherford's history that would sort of apply, dating as far back as the mid-90s, Brendan Shanahan for Paul Coffey when Rutherford was with the Whalers, Mark Andre Fleury to Vegas would be another example, J.T. Miller to New York. The player was involved beyond that which his rights would indicate. And, you know, I think part of that, part of the reasoning there too, then, is the Canucks were able to get a pretty square answer from the player. I won't be signing this summer. Elliot Friedman on Hockey Night and Canada reported that that happened around American Thanksgiving.

So I suppose in exchange for the informational advantage the Canucks took care of the player. Aspa fits his stature. Well, hasn't hasn't Rutherford publicly said that he at least had a suspicion or a gut feeling, even dating back

to the summer that that was the case? And then obviously it was confirmed around American Thanksgiving, but it's not like this kind of came out of nowhere. No, it didn't come out. But I mean, this had been on the teams radar like since the 20, 23, 24 season, especially because of the, the brothers dynamic in New Jersey, right? So, I mean, this had been in the back of their mind. And I think once the J.T. Miller trade happened and, and that season went so haywire, you know, I think there was a sense that, hey, like, we're going to need to turn this around quickly to be appealing to Quinn Hughes. I think that

partly explains some of the moves made this summer, although the club ended up a little half pregnant there once they realized that they were probably not getting a Dvorak Grandland or D'Shaen caliber fill in down the middle of their forward group. I think that's partly why they used that 15th or 14th overall pick on Brayden Coots. But as this sort of reached the finish line, this was not a standard deal. Hughes had a role in dictating, you know, destinations above and beyond that, which, so this is the part of it that I know, right, is that the club worked with the player and that probably explains partly why it was expedited.

I do think the club believed genuinely that this was the time to do it before their leverage diminished. I, however, agree with you. I don't think two playoff runs versus one playoff run matters. I think the marginal value of adding Quinn Hughes for a short-term stint and having a lengthy negotiation window to me anyway is sensible. And realistically, part of what you're trading is something we've been talking about a fair bit, which is you also get that weird window this. summer where you can offer him the sort of contract structure with signing bonuses in max term that will no longer be available to anyone after September 15th. So that's partly

what the wild are buying here. And I think that's a hugely valuable weapon, even if it's possible with the rate of cap growth that Hughes and his advisors would be more comfortable with like a two or three year deal to hit the market again in your late 20s, you know, maybe in 120, 130, $140 million cap world, we don't really know exactly where this is all going. And here's the final part of this that I think is worth, and this is more my suspicion. This is more me thinking my way through this, knowing how organizations function. And, you know, it's said that politics is the art of the possible, right? And there's an element where if your team is not designed to be in 32nd place and finds itself

there by surprise, there's some defense that needs to be played in terms of making sure that your hands are on the tiller. And, you know, I sort of like the power to trade Quinn Hughes, even though your team has failed this season and finds itself at the very bottom of the NHL standings and expediting the effort to do that is one way to also build out time for yourself and your management team in some ways, right? Because, I mean, it's now really difficult to change course, like to move on from Jim Rutherford today after the Hughes trade, right, would be like an admission from the Canucks or a repudiation of this package that they're going to have to

sell to the market, right? That this Bouyam, Rossi first and Ogren package that, you know, you're going to pin a lot of your future hopes on in terms of, you know, selling hope if you can't sell wins locally for the next few years. And so, again, that that's something that I would just suspect based on my organizational reading. And that's sort of a more general reading, not like a specific, this is what I'm hearing in Vancouver, but more a general how hockey people sometimes think when their back is up against the wall. And that to me would be consistent with sort of expediting the timeline here to make sure that it's you who gets to make it. I do also wonder whether it's an acknowledgement of how ridiculous it was to have a guy playing like 30 minutes in a home game against the Buffalo Sabres that you lose and are sitting in 30 second in the standings.

And every time that happens, you're taking on some sort of a risk in terms of injury or something crazy happening on the ice, especially when you're playing half the game the way he was for pretty much every other game over the past month. I do want to say, like, while they did well in the return, I hate the framing of that you've seen. from a lot of insiders right now and like they did well given the circumstance because that portrays the organization as victims in this as opposed to responsible for it at least to some degree ultimately when a player hits well listen when a player hits their ufa years they're well within their right to go play wherever they want to whether it's out east whether it's with family whatever the situation is but we were two years out from that and the reason this clearly escalated is because of the team around him and just how dire and hopeless everything was

And that was the team's fault in terms of every transaction they made for the past high for many years, all being short-sighted and trying to cut corners and everything we've documented throughout. If they felt like back in the summer, this was going to be the way it was going to play out, why did they approach it the way they did in terms of the coaching hire, in terms of the amount of money they spent resigning guys acquiring of Andrew Kane? You could even date it back to last year when obviously this was a bit murkier. But we kind of see the writing on the wall in terms of trading the 12th overall,

well, wound up being the 12 overall pick, which could have even been a more premium asset as an unprotected 26 Rangers pick for two guys who you extend at that point, given their age. I just, that's the thing I'm having a tough time reconciling. And I've seen some conspiracy theories that the management group did all of this stuff and kind of a half, half-hearted effort to appease ownership and prove that we tried our best and it just didn't work. And now we want to do what we wanted to do all along, which was. was actually build this thing properly, take a long view, and rebuild.

And, I mean, that would be incredibly McAvellian. I don't think there's anything to support that they deserve that sort of credit. But you look at this team that was assembled, and it is also pretty tough to make a compelling case that anyone would reasonably think this. I mean, no one expect them to be 32nd in the standings, but no legitimate contender also seems incredibly far-fetched. Yeah, and we would have been as, I wouldn't, I would say, we probably would have expected that this team had more downside than upside risk, right? But we would have

probably pegged them as something like the 20th best team in hockey going into the season on a true talent basis. Certainly, that's where the betting markets had them, right? At a 90 and a half over under. So to be tracking to be a 70 point team is definitely a

you know, skinny part of the bell curve outcome, but also a more probable one than them being like 110. point team in a lot of ways. So yeah, I mean, I think if we're looking at it from a timeline perspective, when they made the Miller trade, I think Hughes's future was still front of mind and the club wanted to find a way to be good. And I think they knew that that was going to be difficult. And I think they were willing to swing on some riskier bets in order to accomplish

it. And I think that's partly why they saw Vander Cain as an upside swing, like a really unique piece who would make them tougher up front and then i what i will say though is i do think somewhere in mid to late june as trade talks stalled and as players kept resigning with their current teams and not hitting the market with the dishean signing looming especially large i think the organizational tone changed a bit and that's why you saw the club cling to the 15th overall or the 14th overall pick excuse me the brayden coots pick the idea being that why would we trade this pick in a package to get for example a marco rossi who we don't see as a as a perfect fit let's take a swing at a perfect fit long term like i do think there was a soft pivot there but obviously it wasn't

total given the extensions that they handed out to demco and bessor and Garland, and of course, the fact that they took on $5 million in salary, a signature offseason acquisition being a 33-year-old of Ander Kane, who also missed all of last season with injury. And that bet has not worked out for the team clearly. So, you know, I think they ended up, as they put it, stuck in the middle. And so I, while I agree that it's, you know, it's not as if they've been in a rebuild all along, I do think that there were signs, you know, as early as late June, that the club was at least beginning to consider a pivot in which they started to, you know, develop younger players, that they held on to that 14th overall

pick and began to at least consider the future as opposed to just sort of pushing all their chips in in an effort to keep Quinn Hughes. So it's like, it's not as clean as we'd like it to be, but I don't think the idea that they were by July 1, at least keeping one eye on future priorities. I do think is true. And I think there's sort of two main data points for it. One would be holding onto that first, and the other would be declining to sign a Jack Roslovick type

in order to maintain jobs for some of the players that had won the Calder Cup for them, you know, Archdeep Baines and Linus Carlson and Max Sasson, over the course of the summer, especially the late summer when the value for agent signings were there to be had. So, yeah, I mean, look, I think it's one of those things that is true.

If you look at it and say that doesn't make sense, I'd find that harder to disagree with. But that doesn't mean that that wasn't how they were thinking of it. Right. I think the only thing that could make this somewhat palatable and it's going to hurt regardless for a Canucks fan for a while is if it actually does represent a fundamental directional change and an aggressive one at that

and they've obviously been very reluctant to admit that. I think there was a belief that Quinn Hughes was so good that you owed it to yourself to try to be competitive while he was around and that he was so good and so transformational that you could not, you could only be so bad with him there. And then we really tested the limits of that this year where they're not only 32nd, but we had this debate at the start of the season during our watchability

rankings. You had them much higher than I did. I think I had them at like 28th or 29th. And I was like, I just don't see it with this team. And then you watch the way these games transpired. And it was complete slop. And the fans were checked out, as you've been noting, in terms of the home crowds lately. And so we're at this point. Let me give you two scenarios here and then we'll take a break after. Sure. Which one do you think is more likely in terms of the playing out the rest of the season for the Cox perspective? The team just completely gives out. and without the only thing that was somewhat holding it up

structurally they finished 32nd in the league where they are at right now that guarantees them a top three pick in this draft with their choice of one of McKenna, Verhoff or Stenberg

and that seems plausible considering as I said they are 32nd and that was with Quinn Hughes playing 27 and a half minutes a night or the other is they get some sort of an incremental boost

whether it's a more nebulous thing in terms of everyone feels a bit more free now that expectations have truly changed and you're not being asked these questions all the time. You also replace a very heliocentric puck dominant player with a volume at least, as we saw in their debut performance in New Jersey,

of like young, fast, kind of motivated players. And as a result of that, just having more capable contributors on this roster that was so thin due to injuries and such, kind of works its way up to closer to where we expected, which was like, let's say they finished 26 or 27th, and all they have to show for this nightmare season is the ninth overall pick yet again seemingly. Well, that would be a disaster, right?

So look, I think the club is ready to work to sink, or at least I guess they can't sink any further. So it worked to remain. Maintain their status. Work to remain toward the bottom. I think they're prepared to do that. And now, I don't know if they're prepared to go as far. as I would go, right? Like I would be looking at this more, more ruthlessly from a, you know,

viewing guys like Pedersen and Demco as depreciating assets. And if you get a good month or two over to those guys, I'd be very much considering my options ahead of the deadline, just off of the logic in the goaltenders case that if I'm going to be entering a two-year period in which I'm not likely to be competing for a playoff spot, I can't be spending $13 million in cap space in net, right? Like that to me is completely nonsensical. The Pedersen thing, too, I mean, if I'm going to be taking a two-year step back, even a two-year step back, right?

And that's me being wildly optimistic, but that's sort of the timeline that Rutherford elaborated on in some of his media availability on Friday. A two-year step back, Pedersen's going to be 30 on the other side. of that at 11.6 million with still years left on his deal um you know there's there's not a lot of star centermen coming up in unrestricted for agency if if you've got a chance to escape from that liability just speaking structurally like cap wise i think that's worth exploring if you're taking a pronounced step back so you know whether it's some of the older like i would expect this to focus more on the older ufas uh your sure would tier guys of course in the months ahead and i you know

this club should be motivated to sell and accumulate even more between now and the trade deadline. And I think they will. As for their results in the short term, I think you bring up a good point in terms of this club. Like there's sort of three things to be mindful of in terms of the chance that they perform better over the balance of the season than they have to this point. One is the availability of Demko, right, who's been hurt for the last six weeks, but returned and played pretty well in New Jersey. on Sunday, certainly he can perform to a level that inhibits your ability to be the 30 second place NHL team, as we know, you know, I'd add that adding Rossi and with Elias Pedersen do to come back into the lineup, I mean, Pedersen, Rossi and whatever else you play in your bottom six,

that's going to be the best center depth that Vancouver's had all season. And that was really an Achilles heel. That was a part of this lineup that had fallen beneath a functional level. And so if that's addressed, you know, that that could potentially make them somewhat more robust. And then, as you note, you know, Rossi, Booiam, and Ogren, I mean, those are all guys with plus speed and plus tools. And maybe you can punch above your weight, right? Be better than the sum of your parts if you have the right sort of mix of attributes at a team level. The reason I'm not concerned about any of that dim, though, is that the Canucks had seven shots on goal in the latter 40 minutes of this game without

Quinn Hughes. The Vancouver Canucks generated per natural stat trick. 0.8 expected goals in 55 on 5 minutes today. And I know there's some score effects present there, given that they led by a narrow margin throughout the evening, but like, or the afternoon, I suppose. But the truth remains that this Canucks team was so dependent on Quinn Hughes to generate offense. And without Quinn Hughes generating offense, I don't think they're going to be able to score enough. I don't think they're going to be able to threaten enough. And in fact, while they get the two-one win and get to start the post-Hughes era with, you know, a clean-ish slate, like a good result, something to feel good about for the group, you could see the seams. You could see the seams of a team that's going to be very hard-pressed to threaten with any regularity.

and that to me is the profile of a 32nd place team, especially with the way that the NHL standings are shaking out. Like, I don't think Rossi is enough to ruin the tank. I don't think Bouyam's enough to ruin the tank. I don't think the combination is enough to ruin the tank. I think this team has sustainably found their level this season and just subtracted their best chance at avoiding it. I do like the players, though.

You know, William in Minnesota, obviously for any 20-year-old defensemen, you're going to have ups and downs. I think playing like third pair of minutes with Zach Bogosian. You could see it on the power play where 73 minutes when he played with Caprizov and Boldy on the top unit, they were 9.1 goals per hour. Then you subtracted him or replace him with either Faber or Spurgeon and that dipped below seven. And I think that's not a coincidence.

Like I think he's got legitimate chops there already. As you can see in the debut, certainly I'm benefiting from a bit of luck, but just how he moves. I do think like what we haven't seen yet, it's understandable. given the age and experience is in college he was such a two-way force in terms of shutting plays down with his skating and I think as he works on just gets more reps to this level and improves his footwork a little bit I think he will be able to unlock that defensive value as well that he had at the university of Denver and he's such a he's such a winner too right like I love that quote so much from the world championships that he said to Connor

Garland about it was like one of the coldest lines you're ever going to hear like all I do is win like of course um now i need to learn how to lose for a couple years here but um rossi is a dog as he mentioned like i love how he plays despite his size and i think people pigeonhole him sometimes because of his height and i want to distinguish between height and size because he's built like a fire hydrant and so he's also not size is totally fine rendon galliger sized no but down the middle it is a bit of a challenge for sure it is but i think i it's one thing that's interesting is i'm telling you right now he is the perfect center for conor garland and i'll be really fascinated because he does play in straight lines because he has the doggedness to go to the dirty areas of the net and uh are

the rink and finish and you know if he was six foot two if six foot two lefty who plays like that immediately any coach would put him with coner garland but because he's like just six foot. I feel like it's going to take a lot of like overcoming personal biases for us to see that regularly, but it's a perfect fit. And like we saw one rush chance where they were on the ice. It was the best the Canucks looked at five on five all game with those two on the ice together. I think you just need to play him like he's Michael Hansus and just accept the limitations that come with that, or at least the fact that it flies in the face of what you think is best practice. that that's my that's my opinion on on marco rossi to use him best you just have to imagine that he's

six foot three well even dating back to his major junior days i just love like he's an interior player despite that yeah and he lives in the high danger area and i just i i'm still confused by why the relationship in minnesota deteriorated the way they did like how they antagonized them in terms of the playoff usage against Vegas when he got bumped down to like 11 minutes per game playing with yakov trennan um and then obviously obviously the contract in terms of waiting until late August to get this three-year bridge deal and getting to this point.

My one quibble piece I do like those players a lot is the draft pick compensation. They get back that first round pick, right? And it's a 26 pick, which presumably based on the fact the Wilder our top five team now before Quinn Hughes came is going to be a pretty lower end first round pick, still valuable nonetheless,

but we've heard Bill Guerin keep coming out. I was just watching the Hughes' debut against the Bruins and he was on the broadcast during the second period. He's talking about how this, was their initial offer. And, you know, he made sure to frame it as like, I wanted Jim or other referred to know I was serious. And so it wasn't lowballing. He was like, I'm going to give you the good stuff right away. But whether they could have figured out something to either get

a future pick when Quinn Hughes might not be on this team and, and it's proximity is further and you don't get that instant gratification, but the relative value of it being a higher pick would intrigue me or just squeezing out extra draft capital because of the way this team's function the Canucks have last five drafts they've made 10 picks in the first three rounds and only eight of those guys are still an organization like I think they still and they might accomplish that with some of those Sherwood trades that you cited

but just getting more ammo and more volume I think is going to be essential if you actually are going to rebuild well especially because I mean it's it they're not even done you know sorry so they've been robbing

Peter to pay Paul for years and years right they still have to make Peter hole here right like they're operating at a bit of a draft pick deficit even in the wake of acquiring an extra first I mean they don't have their own third

which was part of the Lindholm trade or sorry there's a Dorov trade from 23 24 they don't have their own seventh because of an acquisition in which they acquired Vitali Craftsov like four years ago they don't have their second next

year because of the price they paid to dump Ilya McAev's contract right I mean they still have to make um they they haven't even paid off their credit card bill from the years of pushing chips into the middle to be mid so I mean I think the draft pick volume aspect of this is fair to note and you know this was an interesting trade process like I don't think I think teams that were in the running to be selected by the Canucks like right to the wire and ended up in a spot where, you know, I don't know that they'd heard from the Canucks in terms of a circle back. Like, I think the Canucks solicited offers and picked one that they thought was fair, close, gave them the best possible asset. And I think Booiam loomed large there. And I think

once he hit the table, that put the wild in the driver's seat. And so I think that's how that goes down. But, you know, ultimately the success of this trade from a Canucks perspective, I really don't think will be determined by the small picture considerations of maximum value. And again, I want to cite Kyle Davidson and I want to cite Danny Breyer as my favorite examples of this where there have been a lot of rebuilding type moves that they've made where I thought the value was off or, you know, they could have done better or what have you. But it fundamentally doesn't matter if you're getting the big picture right. And I think for the Canucks in this trade anyway,

the big picture, which is that we needed to get back the absolute maximum quality guy we possibly could, that being Booiam, I think was satisfied by this trade. And I think once it was the wild, we're always going to be the team that won the Quinn Hughes sweepstakes. And I mean, I'm sure we should go to break and discuss it on the other side. But, you know, I do want to note just in my view, like, it's going to be really hard for some of those teams that were unwilling, right, to dig into, to make the painful trade for Quinn Hughes, to find a player or contributor capable of boosting them the way Hughes is going to boost Minnesota. And if you're a team like Detroit that's been striking out at the transcendent star level guy,

you know, as much as we like Lucas Raymond, there are levels to this, right? You know, I do sort of wonder if that's an opportunity missed. All right, let's take our break here. And when we come back, we're going to jump into the wild part of this because I got so many notes on how Hughes is going to fit and stuff I'm looking forward to there. You're listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.

All right, we're back here on the HockeyPedioCast for our Sunday special joined by Thomas Trans, breaking down the Quinn Hughes trade. Tom, what a three-month stretch it's been for the Minnesota Wild organization, keeping Carol Caprizov for the next eight years at 17 million after a bunch of teams were kind of circling the waters anticipating him potentially becoming available next summer. That's another good example, by the way, of don't sweat the value details.

The big picture that the Wild were able to eliminate uncertainty on Caprizov at the outset of this season, then have their goalies get hot in November and then trade for Quinn Hughes in December. It's like, who cares that McDavid made that deal look silly? 10 days after it was signed, or maybe it was last, it might have been a week. Who cares that that cap hit was seemed out of step with the market when a few other of those mega deals came in afterwards.

The fact that they had stability on Caprizo, the big picture of it matters so much more than could they have saved 2 million AAV per year over the life of that contract. I mean, in year one of Caprizo's extension next year, when he starts making 17 million, it's going to account for a smaller percentage of the cap. season than what they were paying in debt cap hits for suitor and perise and so that ties into this as well in terms of getting out from under that whatever 15 million albatross that had been holding their cap sheet hostage and trying to maximize this competitive window right this is an organization that's lost in the first round in eight of the past 10 years the other two they didn't qualify

for the playoffs they the central currently has three of the top five teams are point percentage i think the wild after they beat the brunson night are going to move up um but it's looking like like another one of these Atlantic division style from previous seasons, gauntlets in the central in terms of round one and round two for these teams, whoever finishes second third, and it looks like it's going to be Dallas and Minnesota in some order. But they start the year three, six, and three, right? And we talked to the time about their struggles.

And then they go, what, 15, 3 and 2 or whatever since then, with just preposterous goal suppression led by Esper Walshead playing absolutely out of his mind. And he's got a 956-8 percentage since the start. of November. And I do feel like in terms of how this developed, that's specifically happening in terms of him playing that part in turning this around and leading to these results enabled something like this to happen, right? Because I imagine on November 1st that this would have seemed absolutely impossible based on where the Minnesota wild were at during that moment. Right. Yeah, it's a good point. The, well, and, you know, I, I thought they were

dead in the water. After 10 games, I mean, their underlying form looked really concerning. You know, like, it felt like one of those situations, too, where they got some goaltending, then they got some confidence, then they actually started to play better, right? Like the, the luck came before the form meaningfully improved. But who cares? The form has meaningfully improved. And now they have, I mean, how many teams, how many teams would you take ahead of the wild from a fastball perspective in terms of what they can throw at their opponents five on five at the top of their lineup in a three two game right now, right? Like if they load up that top line with Erickson Neck, Poldy, Capris, stuff, they're playing Hughes with Faber, which we were to be. this over text message this week and I was telling you that I thought playing him with favor was the baller move. I mean, they put those five guys on the ice together. It just feels like they're

going to be able to get four for every one of shot attempts, shots, scoring chances against their opponents, most nights. Maybe not against everybody, but against a lot of teams, it's, you're going to see periods where they go into the third down three two and, you know, they out shoot or out attempt their opponent like 27 to 4 in the third period and claw back from it. I mean, I think that's the sort of gear that this team is going to have now that they've added Quinn Hughes. And I wouldn't have told you that, you know, on Thursday. It's unreal that McCar, Merrill Hayskin, and Hughes are all in the same division now. And unreal. I said three of the top five in terms of point percentage. I would stretch it to like, I think five of the top six

or seven teams in the league are all the West right now. And so it's going to be remarkable to follow that. You know what else enabled this? The way. the Minnesota Wild have drafted over the past handful of years because this is what happens when you acquire guys who other teams are going to covet. And what they've done, I think, really well with Judd Brackett. They're running their draft operation has been just generally taking best player available in terms of guys that slip a little bit time and time again for whatever reason. And we're able to parlay that now into Quinn Hughes here. You talk about the fit there in terms of how they're going to use him.

Obviously, now with Brodine out for the time being, in his debut, we saw him playing with Brock Faber. I think that's obviously an undeniable combination. I do wonder when they're at full health if it makes sense to split them up just from the perspective of how they've used their forwards. And similar to what Florida has been doing during their heyday when at full health, where they essentially match Barkov and Forsling in the Tufts, and then they use the Bennett line with Jones and Mikola to try to just tilt.

the ice offensively and take advantage of everything that top pair creates for them and they have that luxury I think now because of the way they've used Boldie with Joel Erickson and Marcus Johansson and the success those guys have had and then the idea of playing them with a favor Brodine parry

when Brodien gets healthy and then just absolutely unleashing Caprizov and Hughes and offensive minutes to crush and you know Rossi got hurt and then Danila Yorov stepped up took his spot as a top line center and he's been playing with Caprizov on that top line. Now,

Zuccarello's out, and I really hope he comes back for them to fully reach their top form and top gear here. But they've been using that line with like 70% offensive zone starts with the vision of maximizing those skills. And so I think the idea of playing it that way would be intriguing. And then if you get situational opportunities to just load up Erickson Boldy and Caprizov with Faber and Hughes, that's that fastball you're referencing. And I think we actually saw them do that on a couple of of occasions off of draws and stuff in the debut against the Bruins.

So I think that's really exciting in terms of, I guess, all the moving parts and different combinations that they're going to have available to them now. Yeah. And, I mean, Hughes's debut, he's already got a goal. They didn't, like, demolish the Bruins territoryally or anything, but, you know, they've handled a team they should handle and done so decisively at home.

I mean, I just think this is going to be, this is not going to be your father's Minnesota Wild team and they haven't been for a while but this one especially I mean I just think the offensive

firepower that they're going to have at their disposal is you know probably capable of going toe to toe with just about anybody at least at the top of the lineup right? There's probably the abs probably

have more depth but and I suppose they are built a little more traditionally because they've got McKinnon who's a center and the wild still don't have that you know number one center uh type uh guy but i mean the the four or five best players on this wild team i i feel like you can stack them up against anybody and that's incredible he also just improves their biggest need in my opinion

which was creating easier five-on-five looks there was 28th in the league before this trade in goals per hour at 5-1-5, only the Rangers, Kings, flames, and Cracken were less efficient. And partly because they just didn't really have any rush element. Like, I think they were the only team under five rush chances per game, and they struggled to complete stretch passes and get it up quickly to their forwards. And Hughes does that as well as anyone in the world right now,

and he's so efficient in terms of that. And I think that's going to unlock so much for them to go along with a team that's third in the league in offense's own possession time and cycles the living daylights out of the pocket the idea of Hughes being out there with either boldier or caprisob and playing keep away essentially for 45 seconds while they completely take away your legs and then punish you, I think is going to be a sight to behold. So I think they're going to be absolutely awesome. And from Hughes, you and I have spoken about this. I haven't personally loved his game that much this season. He still had the flashy

moments, of course, and the skating is absolutely demonic. But I think partly because of how much defensive attention he was receiving the lack of options available to him. He was forced in this position where I think he had to play hero ball and force it sometimes. And I think that was an acknowledgement from him that he probably doesn't want to do that. I think everything we know about him is that he doesn't. And he wants to be more efficient and distribute the puck when he can. But that was the most likely path towards success. And so that's what he did to give them a chance. And now he goes into the spot where he's not going to have to do that, right? Just comparing the amount of attention he'd get every time you'd have the puck near the blue line with the Canucks

where everyone was keying in on him first now where you're going to have Caprisalver Boldie cycling it down low and him just sort of drifting back door or popping wide open or just being completely on man that's a luxury that he hasn't had and i don't even know how long now yeah i mean he hasn't had enough help and honestly i think it took away from his effectiveness i think he stopped trusting it this season. You know, Hughes at his best, and I've documented this at length, you've talked to Darrell Belfrey about it on this podcast, but, you know, Hughes at his best had to work to elevate himself in his decision-making tree as an offensive option, right?

He is a pass-first player. And I think as things broke down for this team in Vancouver, especially, you know, I think there's an element to which he became a little bit. two hero ball, right? Heliocentric was your term. And I think that's exactly right. I think he stopped making the right play the way that he has always done. Um, you know, I, I think like, because again, I think this is a guy who had to work to shoot more, right? To call and he had to work too to improve his shot to make that the right play. And he did that and it powered his Norris trophy win. It made him more valuable in aggregate, but I think this season with fewer options to work with, fewer

players to play off of, you know, I do think he had to make less efficient decisions. And yeah, you're right that this team should be able to upgrade that. One other thing that I'm curious about in terms of what we'll see in Minnesota, you know, like whether it's Hartman, whether it's, you know, all Eric's and Ack, maybe it's Boldie, maybe it's a winger, but, you know, there was a chemistry between Hughes and J.T. Miller that I think was pretty interesting to watch, especially with the way that, you know, Rick Talkett wanted to play where the team maintained possession and really didn't take very high risk, make very high risk passes. Like, they weren't looking for slot passes very frequently. They were happy to go high,

they were happy to just exhaust you, they were happy to change on the fly and, you know, tire you out to the point where Quinn Hughes unlocks a guy and, you know, whether it was Miller up front, sort of providing the screen or Miller dropping back and them sort of interplaying off of one another up high

and then one of them taking a wrist shot through layered traffic, that became a real weapon for the Canucks. And I'm curious to see, because we see some of this from Caprizo, I mean, you know, one thing Caprizov does at an exceptional level is he'll have those 90 second to 120 second shifts

that just seem cruel. Yeah, just circling around the ozone. Yeah, and it just like forcibly removes the oxygen from Defender's lungs, Sedeen twin style. And I think Hughes has that in his bag too. They both are those,

that level of player, you know, that sort of fitness freak type player where they just don't seem to get tired like other elite professional athletes. So maybe it's Caprizov with whom he'll develop that chemistry. But that'll come. There'll be a wild forward for whom the, you know, Hughes Minutes with X guy are especially potent. I'm really curious to see which guy it is. But yeah, I mean, he's all of the above, I think. Yeah, he's going to have it. He's going to have it with somebody. Like, it's going to happen

and I bet you will know it in like a week. I don't think it's going to take us a long time to be watching the wild and realize who it is that, you know, know, is, like, the Bouchard to Hughes's McDavid or the McCar to Hughes's McKinnon? I mean, he's so smart about utilizing his teammates to get the most out of them, right? And that was kind of the tragedy of this season. And on the goal scoring note, I mean, what, he went 8, 3, 8,87 in terms of goals, his first four years. And then he started working with Belfrey, put real thought into getting better mechanically, but also where he was shooting from and how he was attacking defenses.

And then he scores 16 and 17 the previous two seasons. And I think there's a tangible difference between, him having to do all the work dancing up high, holding on to the puck for 40 seconds, and then getting that shot off, as opposed to allowing one of these other teammates and Boldier Caprizov to do so, and then attacking downhill or being open and being fresh and stepping into that. And so I think that's going to unlock that part of his game as well, and it's going to be really, really fun to watch. Let's end with this, Tom. I got one more note here that I think we haven't hit on yet. Do you feel like in the framing of this entire conversation

leading up to this trade and then the trade finally materializing the people were just underselling how impactful and downright transformative a player like this can be because it was kind of portrayed as this sort of risk for risk for organizations to take in terms of paying a haul to acquire them for a potentially year and a half or so and I just see especially for the wild here the risks to be relatively negligible for the most part not only are they really good and are going to have two cracks of this now, but they acquired a guy who's in his prime at 26 years old making less than $8 million. And I think they're going to have a lot of options available to them this summer, regardless of how this goes, right? Because you mentioned that

contract, we'll see, but I'm pretty skeptical that he's going to be able to pass up the temptation of a deal that's going to pay him an extra $30 million in his age 34 and 35 seasons, the way a team's going to be able to offer, whether that's Minnesota or whether they play out this season and potentially explore a trade down the road out east as well. And if they do so, especially if it's with an extension, I imagine they're going to be able to recoup a pretty significant portion of what they paid here while also earning the most fun season in franchise history, even if he's just a pure rental for this one season. Yeah, it's a really interesting, you know, I think there's two paths for how this plays out that are both wins for the wild. And I think plan one would obviously

be that, you know, you throw something preposterous in front of him in terms of both the signing bonus structure and that extra eight year this summer and get that locked in before the new CBA kicks in. And it's the sort of contract that'll never be available to him again. And you're coming off of what's been a really fun season. And hopefully you win a playoff round or two. You know, anything beyond the conference final is always gravy in my mind and go from there. But I think there's another scenario where the wild can also make this more than just a rental move. And that would be you throw a signing bonus laden two or three year deal in front of him. And Hughes and his representatives at CAA think, oh, we can actually do this,

you know, line up the expiry of my deal. Maybe it's with Jack. Maybe it's with Luke. or maybe it's, you know, in between, but we'll have time later in our careers to figure this out. And we can take a stab at this in Minnesota and hit unrestricted free agency again in a world where the cap is 20, 30% higher than it is today. And that's when we can still cash in on a max term deal. So, you know, I think there's lots of worlds where this works. Hughes has already done something unusual and that he's moved his stuff.

um so uh you know it would be very unusual to move your stuff twice that would be even more unusual so i think there's a lot of different scenarios where this becomes more than a rental for the wild and to be totally honest with you you know like where are you getting a player like Quinn Hughes right again i i i sort of i'm on the side that this is the sort of risk that a team should take even if you're not one of those six or seven right i mean mean, the wild acquire Quinn Hughes and now I feel like they've joined the devils in terms of that tier beneath the contender tier where I think they can get there. Maybe they need one more top six forward. I think you'd love to still add a center if you can. And you've still got some

interesting prospects to play with too in trying to find that player if you're Minnesota. But nonetheless, I mean, we're going to be taking this team more seriously now. You know, I think there's a bunch of teams, whether it's Washington or the Detroit Red Wings or certainly the Devils, that I think, you know, given how Hughes changes the complexion to their team probably should have been more

aggressive. I like that the Minnesota Wild found a way to add an elite talent to their lineup this weekend. I think that's exactly, that's the ball game. How often do we see teams trip over themselves in the step of you know,

bundling good players to get one great player. I mean, all the time. And you're not going to find a much surer bet great player who moves, you know, this season or, frankly, most seasons across the past decade. And even when those guys do move, you're either gambling on them before they've proven it a L.S. Sam Reinhart, right? Or you're gambling on them because they've had a back surgery that no one's ever played through in Jack Eichel. I mean, you know, you're taking on a level of risk that just doesn't seem present in Quinn Hughes's case, the risk on Hughes is, is a timing risk. And to me, that's negligible versus the, you know, ability to get him into your building, have a blast, right? Find some, maybe he finds

some chemistry with Caprizo. Feels like a safe bet, right? And like we've seen with McDavid and Drysidal, I think you put a hockey genius on the ice with another hockey genius, like a true genius, who pushes them and they're doing crazy stuff and dunking on opponents on a night tonight basis, you know, and this was Garen's rant. If the hockey is good, right, a lot of things fall into place. And I think that's right. I think that's exactly the right bet to make. I mean, I love this for the Minnesota Wilde, even as I look at the price paid and say, yeah, that's a huge price as it should be. You just traded for Quinn Hughes. I mean, I just think, yeah, as you said, the risk is this isn't a pure rental. There's so many moving parts here that could open the window

for this. And it was a very calculated risk and a small one of that, in my opinion. I, I, I thought the optics of what Friedman said on Saturday were bewildering to me in terms of the devils in particular, not being able to facilitate this type of deal because they couldn't move off of some of their no trade clauses that had previously signed and how we talked so much in the off season about how they were nearly proactive enough with that and then that coming back to bite him here. I guess if you're an East team though, it would be a relatively good outcome in him going to Minnesota here just because I guess it technically keeps the dream alive for the summer of 2027 though. yeah yeah the i mean i guess i'd be very uncomfortable if i was the devils just sort of waiting on that right of again i think i think the value of netting and and securing hughes would have been through the roof uh it's shocking to me that they couldn't find a way to get it done yeah i think a 26 year old he was making 7.85 is quite a bit more valuable than a 28 year old queen he was making 15 million or whatever he winds up well especially once you pray

in the uncertainty that he comes at all. Of course. All right. There's so many more layers. We don't have time. We've got to get out of here. You've got a bunch of other obligations. I'm going to let you go to.

What do you want to plug on the way out? Yeah. I mean, check out Canucks talk. We'll have all your talk about the Canucks this week, SportsNet 650, Monday through Friday, noon to 2 p.m. On your AM dial in Vancouver or wherever you get your podcasts. And, of course, we've got a bunch of great, a bunch of great Quinn Hughes trade coverage going on at the athletic.

I've been writing stuff. Harmon Dyle's been writing stuff. Mike Rousseau's been writing stuff. Pierre LeBron's been writing stuff. No stone left unturned at the athletics. So come check all of that out. Actually, exciting times for Canucks talk. Not to disparage previously,

but I feel like I'd have to drag that out of you. And now it's like, I got a lot to talk about. So please turn on Monday. I got a lot to talk about. All right, buddy. Well, enjoy the rest of the trip. Keep up to quite work. Please subscribe to the PDOCs Patreon for extra episodes.

Give us a five-star review wherever you listen. Drans and I'll be back next Sunday, of course, for a more traditional Sunday special. We're going to cover the rest of the league, but we have to do this here today. Thank you for listening to the Hockey Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.