Canucks' Quinn Hughes Was Robbed Of USA's 4 Nations Captaincy
With how Quinn Hughes has played and handled himself with all the Vancouver Canucks' drama this season, not even being in Team USA's leadership group is robbing him.
When the first six players for each country's 4 Nations Face-Off roster were named last June, only one member of Team USA was wearing a ‘C’ for his team — Vancouver Canucks D-man Quinn Hughes.
Auston Matthews, who was awarded the U.S. captaincy on Thursday, didn’t take over from John Tavares on the Toronto Maple Leafs until Aug. 14.
The full U.S. lineup does feature two other captains who have served their teams longer: Dylan Larkin of the Detroit Red Wings, who assumed the role on Jan. 13, 2021, and Brady Tkachuk of the Ottawa Senators, who assumed his position in October of the same year.
But by slotting Charlie McAvoy and Matthew Tkachuk into their alternate captain roles, USA Hockey did pull its entire leadership group from its first six picks.
All three of those players are in the same age bracket — drafted in 2016, two years ahead of Hughes. But with the year he’s having and the leadership qualities that he has already demonstrated at just 25 years old, the reigning Norris Trophy holder was robbed.
On the ice, Hughes has almost singlehandedly kept the Canucks in the hunt for a playoff spot during a season that would be conservatively described as ‘tumultuous.’ Given how valuable he has been to his team, his name is now being mentioned more and more often as a possible Hart Trophy candidate.
With 58 points in 46 games, Hughes is leading the Canucks in scoring by a margin of 23 points over second-place J.T. Miller. He just passed Brady Tkachuk as the top point producer from the 2018 draft class. And while leading all defensemen in scoring so far this season, he's on pace to beat the 92 points that won him the Norris last year despite having missed four games last month due to injury.
When it happened just after Christmas, that injury was supposed to have kept him on the sidelines for weeks. But since he returned to the lineup with a brace on his hand, Hughes' ice time has actually increased to nearly 26 minutes a night, and he has 16 points over the last 12 games.
Here's just one example of the moves he’s pulling off on a nightly basis these days.
Hughes' offense is not coming at the expense of defense. Plus-minus is a flawed stat, but when the Canucks’ team goal differential is minus-13, it’s telling that just five Vancouver skaters are on the positive side of the ledger. Hughes leads them all at plus-15.
SportLogiq has more numbers that underscore how important he is to the Canucks’ team play — including a 5-on-5 expected goals rate of 56.4 percent when he’s on the ice and 44.4 percent when he’s not. Their numbers also illustrate how he's outperforming his Norris year this season.
Now, let’s talk intangibles.
On top of leading by example on the ice, Hughes has willingly shouldered his share of media responsibility through the Canucks' rough waters over the last few months, acknowledging the issues in the dressing room while expressing confidence that the team will, eventually, get past it all.
Now that team president Jim Rutherford has brought the discord between J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson into the open, maybe that’s starting to happen. After the Canucks picked up their third-straight win in Nashville on Wednesday, Thatcher Demko told Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy that the group had some “internal meetings about it being the time of year that we’ve got to string some wins together.” The results have been there.
Since assuming the Canucks’ captaincy, Hughes has also willingly stepped up for league-level initiatives. When he invited the cameras into his home for Prime Video’s Faceoff docuseries, viewers learned not just that he’s doing his own cooking as part of a commitment to a healthy lifestyle but also that he’s reading voraciously and committed to improving his mind as well as his body.
Hughes is also coming into 4 Nations with strong relationships with many of his teammates. There’s his brother Jack, of course. He was also roommates with Brady Tkachuk during his time with the USA Hockey National Team Development Program and is close with the Tkachuk family. J.T. Miller is also on the U.S. roster.
In the media glare that’s sure to follow all 4 Nations players in Montreal and Boston next month, Hughes would have been a thoughtful and articulate spokesperson for the favored American team in the captain's role, answering every request with the same grace that he displays on a daily basis in Vancouver.
If there's a silver lining to the snub: 4 Nations is, at its core, just a warm-up for next year's big international tournament, the 2026 Olympics.
The way he’s going right now, Hughes’ case for the captaincy will be even stronger next season.
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