As Quinn Hughes Takes the Lead in the NHL Scoring Race, Team Success Remains Job 1

Vancouver Canucks captain Quinn Hughes stands on top of the NHL in points, a rarity last seen by a Hall of Famer at this point in the season. But that doesn't mean as much as his team's greater goal after Monday's game in front of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

VANCOUVER - The logjam of Vancouver Canucks at the top of the NHL scoring race was broken on Monday night. Quinn Hughes now sits on top of the mountain.

With a goal and an assist in the Canucks' 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, Hughes reached 30 points in just his 19th game of the year. 

And how's this for an accomplishment? On Monday, he became the first defenseman to lead the NHL in scoring at the 30-point mark since a certain eight-time Norris Trophy winner nearly 50 years ago.

Bobby Orr finished that 1974-75 season with 46 goals and 89 assists for 135 points. It was the second-highest point total of his career, and earned him his second scoring title as well as his only Lester B. Pearson Award as the MVP voted by the players — what is now the Ted Lindsay Award.

If we project out Hughes' eight goals and 22 assists to a full 82-game season, he'd finish at 34 goals and 94 assists for 128 points — which is impressively close. 

For a more recent comparison, consider this:

Exactly one year ago, Erik Karlsson sat tied for third in league scoring with 11-17-28 through 20 games. That was a 115-point pace, but he did slow down as the season went on, finishing at 101 and capturing the Norris with 123 of 196 first-place votes. 

He won handily — and I voted for him in first place — even though the Sharks finished two points out of the NHL basement in 2022-23. His individual performance was impressive enough that it deserved to be recognized.

For Hughes, his points are a by-product of what really matters to him — and why he has proven to be an inspired choice as Vancouver's latest captain.

"I think that I was second in the league for defensemen for points last year," he said after Monday's game. "It doesn't really mean much at end of the day, so I wanted to be in the playoffs and be on a successful team and a successful organization. We've been successful to start the year and we've got to keep going."

The captain's two points on Monday were mirrored by his team's two standings points from their win over the Sharks. There are challengers on their tail as they head out on a 3-in-4 road trip that starts in Denver on Wednesday before moving on to rematches against the Seattle Kraken on Friday and the Sharks, again, on Saturday. 

But the Canucks will wake up Tuesday morning sitting third in the league standings with a 13-5-1 record for 27 points. They're two behind the Boston Bruins, who picked up only one point on Monday in an overtime loss in Tampa, and one back of the Western Conference-leading Vegas Golden Knights. They lost in overtime in Philadelphia last Saturday before being shut out in Pittsburgh on Sunday, and at 2-4-1 in their last seven games, the Golden Knights will close out their current road trip with a tough date against the Dallas Stars on Wednesday.

The first head-to-head meeting of the year between Vegas and Vancouver is now just over a week away: Thursday, Nov. 30, at Rogers Arena. 

On Monday, Hughes was named the first star of the game for the sixth time this season. And while three-star selections can be somewhat arbitrary, no other Canuck has been named the first star more than once so far this year. That's a marker of how Hughes' play has been directly affecting game outcomes, night after night.

He was also named first star in the Canucks' 10-1 blowout win in San Jose back on Nov. 2, when he finished with a goal and four assists in a season-low 18:20 of ice time. 

On Monday, he played 23:24. And while he was limited to "only" two points, he made them count — and earned some style points as well.

The Sharks have cleaned up their game since those double-digit losses to the Canucks and Penguins earlier this month. They came into Vancouver with a 3-3-0 record in their previous six games. 

Monday's affair remained scoreless until Hughes took matters into his own hands midway through the second period — dancing all the way around the perimeter of the offensive zone before beating Mackenzie Blackwood with a sharp-angle shot that hit the top corner with pinpoint accuracy.

A certain Jack Hughes has also been known to score from down low on that left side. Something the brothers have been working on together during their summers, perhaps?

Early in the third period, Tomas Hertl scored a power-play goal to get the Sharks within one. But Vancouver added an insurance goal at 7:10 when Hughes lofted a puck on net from the right side before J.T. Miller banged it past Blackwood to make the score 3-1.

That's the goal that elicited this tremendous response from special guest Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan. 

Harry was on hand for the ceremonial puck drop as part of a series of planning meetings for the Invictus Games, an event founded by Harry after his time serving in the British military, as an international adaptive sporting competition for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans. The 2025 edition will feature winter sports for the first time and will be held in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C..

And while Hughes and Miller tried to play it cool when asked for their thoughts on having royalty in the house, Canucks coach Rick Tocchet was more forthcoming about his interaction as Harry cut through the Vancouver bench while leaving the ice after the puck-drop ceremony.

"It was pretty cool," Tocchet said. "I gave him a fist bump. I don't know if you're allowed to do that, but I did it. He did it. He kind of looked at me, but he did it."

Just over 21 years ago, Harry's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, dropped the puck for a pre-season game between the Canucks and Sharks at what was then known as General Motors Place on Oct. 6, 2002, while she was in Canada for her Golden Jubilee tour.

While Harry chose to do it alone on the ice, the Queen was flanked by hockey luminaries, including Wayne Gretzky and 2002 Olympic gold medalists Ed Jovanovski and Cassie Campbell-Pascall. While Harry and Meghan took in the full game, the Queen chose to stay for just the first period.

And while it didn't count in the standings, the Canucks won that one, also, by a score of 3-2.