It took just one game for Quinn Hughes to make Minnesota Wild fans fall in love with him even more than they already were.
Following a 6-2 detonation of the Bruins, in which Hughes played 27 dominating minutes of ice time and scored a goal, he said everything Wild fans were hoping to hear about his future in Minnesota.
Not everyone was pleased, though.
Mike Valenti, who hosts a show in Detroit on 97.1 The Ticket, took issue with one specific part of Hughes' comments about being traded to the Wild. Specifically, he heard it as a shot at Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman for balking at doing enough to make a trade happen.
Quinn Hughes' comments triggered a Detroit radio host to go on an epic rant
Here's the part he didn't like:
"There are other teams that probably could have thrown in certain packages like [the Wild] too, but at the end of the day, they didn't want to do that or didn't want to trade two or three assets from their team like Billy did. So I'll remember that, and that means a lot to me."
This comes after rumors had been swirling that the Red Wings were a potential landing spot for the star defenseman and that he wanted to be traded there.
"This seems like, feels like, sounds like it's directed at Steve Yzerman," Valenti said. "And this comes on the heels of the [Elliotte] Friedman report that ... [Simon] Edvisson was the holdup. Eff him. You could have had Hughes. He's a superstar left-handed defenseman who is absolutely the puck mover, the zone breaker, the quarterback that you desperately need."
Co-host Rico Beard also took offense, noting that Hughes pointing out that the Wild stepped up when other teams didn't suggested he wanted to be in Detroit and was twisting the knife.
It's a truly epic rant:
Do you think Quinn Hughes' comments were directed at Yzerman and the Red Wings? pic.twitter.com/I283U6Ps9d
— 97.1 The Ticket: (@971theticketxyt) December 16, 2025
It's hard to not revel a bit in the that the Wild have the league this shook over making the Hughes trade. It also highlights just how gutsy the trade was and how much credit Bill Guerin deserves for pulling it off.
Trading away Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, and Liam Ohgren, plus a first-round pick, is a boatload of assets and the type of package that would have been hard for any team to match. Detroit is currently tied for the fourth-most points in the Eastern Conference, but is still well behind the titans leading in the West.
Perhaps they could have pulled off a better offer but it's worth wondering how much of the team's fortune that would have depleted.
For the Wild, it's an uncharacteristic trade for a Minnesota team. Franchises here love to kick the can down the road and bet on future assets developing, rather than going all-in now. We've watched the Twins dwindle for decades doing this and only recently have the Timberwolves started to act more serious.
The Wild are making a big gamble, and while we'll have to wait and see if it pays off it's clearly working if folks around the league are this worked up they weren't able to make it happen.