The Minnesota Wild pulled off one of the biggest trades of the season when they acquired Quinn Hughes last December. But while Hughes gave the Wild some star power and a difference maker to get out of the first round of the playoffs, one that stands out is that Hughes has yet to visit his former team, the Vancouver Canucks.
The good news is that if Hughes was longing for the Pacific Northwest, he won’t have to wait much longer.
The Wild’s schedule was released on Thursday along with Hughes’s return trip to Vancouver on Oct. 25. The game will be part of a brutal stretch for the Wild as they play 10 of their first 14 games and 20 of their first 30 games on the road, but it will have some added weight for Hughes, who will face the team he began his career with.
Quinn Hughes’s return to Vancouver will be polarizing for Canucks fans
The Wild’s last trip to Vancouver came in a 4-2 loss six days before general manager Bill Guerin pulled the trigger on a trade to bring Hughes to Minnesota. The deal, which sent Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren, Zeev Buium and a 2026 first-round pick (Adam Novotny) to Vancouver, turned out to be a massive victory for the Wild and Hughes has done a lot since then.
Hughes recorded five goals and 53 points in 48 regular season games but turned it on with four goals and 15 points during the Wild’s 11-game playoff run. He also won a gold medal with the United States Olympic team last February, but he still has yet to make his return to Vancouver.
Hughes was the seventh overall pick in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft and made a massive impact during his seven-plus seasons in Vancouver. He ranks first among defenseman in Canucks history with 432 points and sixth with 61 goals but that’s even more impressive considering he ranks 12th with 459 games played.
That production helped Hughes become a star, making All-Star appearances during the 2019-20 and 2023-24 seasons and winning the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman during the 2023-24 campaign. Named the 15th captain in Canucks history in Sept. 2023, Hughes was a franchise cornerstone until the franchise went into turmoil and the 26-year-old informed the Canucks that he would not sign a contract extension when his deal expires after the 2026-27 season.
That led to his path to Minnesota and it’s unknown what kind of reception Hughes will get when he makes his return. While some Canucks fans blame former general manager Patrik Alvin for failing Hughes, others believe that Hughes failed them, failing to show the leadership that kept Vancouver’s locker room from falling apart and quitting on the team after making the playoffs during the 2023-24 season.
Hughes also triggered the latter crowd with his comments before the Wild hosted Vancouver on April 2.
“Honestly, I don’t even really know a lot of their guys,” Hughes said via Trevor Beggs of Daily Hive. “Obviously, I played with some of the young guys there for three or four months, but a lot of the guys I was there with for the meat of my six years aren’t there.”
In Hughes’s defense, the Canucks traded five players at the trade deadline, which makes it a much different team than the one he was on last December. But whatever the reaction is, it’s sure to be an emotional one and Hughes’s return trip to Vancouver will finally be made during the opening month of the regular season.
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