The Minnesota Wild’s season has officially come to an end, falling in five games to the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night. While the Wild took a step forward by advancing out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2015, the chase to win a championship is on and sets the stage for an important summer.
General manager Bill Guerin has several things to address during the offseason including finding a top-six forward, adding to the team’s center depth and potentially diffusing a goalie controversy created during this year’s playoffs. But there is one task that rises above the others and that’s signing Quinn Hughes to a contract extension.
Acquired in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks on Dec. 12, Hughes was a transformational force for the Wild this season, but it’s time to reward him for his efforts and keep him in Minnesota for the long haul.
Quinn Hughes's new contract is the Wild's top priority this summer
Hughes’s contract situation was one of the downsides of the trade to Minnesota. While the Wild would easily give up Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren, Zeev Buium and their 2026 first-round draft pick again, the one regret may be not doing so without a contract extension as he is only signed through the 2026-27 season.
Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman cited that as a reason his team didn’t make a trade even with the framework in place and the price has only gone up since he made his debut with the Wild on Dec. 14.
Minnesota went 25-15-7 after the Hughes trade and locked in their playoff spot in the Central Division standings. Hughes also needed just 48 games to become the best offensive blue liners in franchise history, setting a franchise record among defensemen with 53 points. While that production continued into the Wild’s playoff run with four goals and 14 points in 11 games, those numbers pale into comparison to the residual effect he had on everyone around him.
Brock Faber was the biggest beneficiary of the trade as Hughes’s defensive partner. While Faber was a solid player before the deal, he now looks like a blossoming superstar, with nine goals and 27 points coming after the trade and four goals with 10 points during Minnesota’s playoff run.
Kirill Kaprizov (27) and Matt Boldy (25) benefitted greatly with Hughes on the ice, ranking eighth and 11th in the NHL in goals scored after the trade. But the Wild also did more as a team, ranking seventh in goals scored (178) and third in power play goals (41) after Hughes’s arrival.
The biggest impact, however, may have come off the ice. For years, the Wild have been on the backburner in the minds of NHL fans but Hughes changed all of that. It’s not that the Wild didn’t have star power with Boldy and Kaprizov, it’s that they never had someone who has grabbed attention of a national audience like Hughes has, scoring a game-winning overtime goal for Team USA against Sweden in the Olympics and becoming a nightly attraction for fans filing into Grand Casino Arena.
By the end of the year, No. 43 jerseys were just as popular in St. Paul as Kaprizov’s No. 97 and Boldy’s No. 12 and it’s become clear that they can’t afford to let him walk out of the building as a free agent after next season.
Sportnet’s Elliotte Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast “he would be surprised” if Hughes didn’t sign an extension with the Wild and added a prediction that he would sign a three-year extension worth an estimated $14 to $15 million.
That price would make him one of the highest-paid defensemen in NHL history and would keep him in Minnesota through the 2029-30 season. But he also could easily ask for something closer to the $17 million Kaprizov got in his eight-year, $136 million extension that will kick in next season.
The Kaprizov deal wound up being sticker shock for fans last offseason. But it was justified knowing how much his presence meant to the Wild. In just a half a season, Hughes has landed in the same boat and should be on the top of Guerin’s to do list as he heads into the summer.
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