The Vancouver Canucks are turning the page on a failed era, and now, following the Quinn Hughes trade, they can fully embrace a rebuild, one that they desperately need.
There was no trade on earth that the Vancouver Canucks could’ve made that could replace superstar defenseman and captain Quinn Hughes adequately.
The old adage is the team that gets the best player wins the trade, and Hughes is that player. It was coming, but there’s no substitute for the feeling when the news actually hits, and the Canucks fanbase may collectively swear off social media on Friday nights forever.
Lucky things don’t happen to the Canucks very often, and it did when Hughes fell to seventh overall at the 2018 draft. The Detroit Red Wings could’ve drafted the Michigan-area product sixth overall, but passed, and ended up being one of the teams that reportedly offered a trade.
It was a sad day for the Canucks franchise and its fanbase when the deal occurred, because Hughes represented their best chance to win a Cup, and they were trading him in his prime at 26 years old.
Hughes’ last game was a 3-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres – the other 1970 expansion team whose own history of tragic events mirror the Canucks’ and had not won a road game in regulation since April of the previous season – felt oddly poetic about the way a core led by Hughes that had shined so bright ended up seeing their beloved black skate jersey being thrown on the ice.
That Judd Bracket, who helped the Canucks draft Hughes in 2018, and since then, as the Minnesota Wild’s director of amateur scouting, built a prospect pool deep enough to entice the trade, adds a layer of irony.
The Canucks released a statement after the trade, thanking Hughes for his services and noting the “very young, good players from Minnesota… will be a key part of the rebuild that we are currently in, giving us a bright future moving forward.”
'Not An Easy Day For The Franchise': GM Patrik Allvin Explains Why The Canucks Traded Captain Quinn Hughes
GM Patrik Allvin met with the media following the Quinn Hughes trade.
Finally, after an exodus of key players over the past few seasons, with the exclamation mark being this trade, the Canucks admit this team can no longer compete for a Cup. Previously, they had denied that a rebuild was even an option.
In some ways, trading Hughes felt inevitable. The more it was discussed, and the more Jim Rutherford made reference that Hughes had desired to play with his brothers in New Jersey, the more it seemed likely to happen. The Canucks had entered the season with massive holes in their lineup and merely had hope that maybe they could win enough games to convince Hughes to sign an extension.
There’s been a long-time disconnect between what the team is selling and what its fanbase wants, but trading Hughes has at least temporarily brought the two sides to the same conclusion – that this team is laying the groundwork for a new core.
If the quest for the top pick in what appears to be a very deep draft is fully underway, the next question is what the Canucks do with the rest of their roster. Evander Kane and Kiefer Sherwood should be traded, but there’s a group of veteran players who are signed to long-term contracts that still have value, except now they’re complementary players without the main ingredient.
There is going to be so much more pressure on Elias Pettersson. The spotlight is squarely on him. He is the last piece of a once-promising four-player core that also included J.T. Miller and Bo Horvat. If the Canucks are committed to a rebuild, certainly Pettersson, who was drafted one year before Hughes, could be a logical piece to trade.
Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren and whatever the first-round pick turns into will make the Canucks better, but in an unknown number of seasons from now, and the unknown is a little terrifying.
There is a future where Pettersson is a bona fide two-way No. 1 center, Rossi is a high-end 60-point playmaking center on the second line, and Aatu Raty is a reliable face-off winner on the third line. Buium becomes another outstanding power-play quarterback, the Canucks’ young defensemen realize their potential, the veterans stick around, and Thatcher Demko stays healthy.
But we’ve seen the numerous ways a rebuild can go wrong, and the way the Canucks imploded since pushing the Edmonton Oilers to Game 7 in the playoffs just two seasons ago has been astonishing.
For a fanbase whose trust in the team had eroded so much, there was at least some goodwill that was returned for executing a difficult trade so competently. Can the Canucks stay focused and commit to this rebuild, or could another unexpected overachieving season, such as the one in 2023-24, tempt them to again make big moves before the foundation has been fully built?
In past seasons, they have made costly decisions to trade valuable first-round picks for short-term, win-now solutions that reeked of impatience instead of thoughtful, longer-term planning.
If Rutherford and GM Patrick Allvin were given the green light to pull the trigger on a trade involving Hughes, then the notion is that they’ll be the ones to rebuild it, too. They passed the first test trading Hughes, and what they do next will be very telling.
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