The New Jersey Devils would like to add Quinn Hughes in the coming years. His off-season contract drama with the Minnesota Wild is perfect for the Devils as they wait for his decision.
The biggest story in the world of the New Jersey Devils right now is the contract negotiations taking place between Quinn Hughes and the Minnesota Wild. The thought is that a few options are on the table.
One possibility is that Quinn tells them that he’s going to New Jersey at the end of the season to play with Jack and Luke no matter what. From there, the Wild would have a couple of options.
One would be to trade Quinn to another team, as the Vancouver Canucks did in December of 2025. They would get a haul for him, but it is possible that they wouldn’t totally recoup the assets they gave up for him due to the new situation. The Devils, in all likelihood, would be in the mix for that, getting Quinn involved even earlier.
The Wild could also look at 2026-27 as an “all-in” kind of year. They have a core built to win, but they would have to push all of their chips in to try and win the Cup before Quinn leaves next summer.
The other possibility for Quinn is that he does like his situation in Minnesota and he is committed to extending. That would likely take the Devils out of his career equation. If he signed a three-year deal, lining his next free agency up with Jack’s, New Jersey would then be on a four-year competitive clock to win by the end of 2029-30.
Obviously, that would be a disaster for the New Jersey Devils, but something that GM Sunny Mehta would have to deal with. Before anything else can be done within the organization, this detail must be ironed out.
The good news for New Jersey is that the longer this drags out, the better their chances become of landing Quinn. At the beginning of the summer, the Wild made it seem like they knew for a fact he was extending. In the middle of the summer, it became that they were confident he’d get a deal done. Now, it is “a big decision”.
Earlier in the summer, the Ottawa Senators traded Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers so he could play with his brother Matthew on a Stanley Cup-contending roster. These types of moves are very possible in the modern-day NHL.
New Jersey doesn’t have the recent pedigree that Florida does, but adding Quinn Hughes would turn them into a legit contender from the Eastern Conference. The path to the final is easier for New Jersey than Minnesota as well, if you’re looking at it from that scope.
Will Quinn Hughes play for the Devils in 2026-27 at any point? It’s not impossible, and every day that passes without an extension in Minnesota increases the chances that it happens eventually.
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