Quinn Hughes has been connected to the Philadelphia Flyers ever since Rick Tocchet took over as head coach, and there's a chance the superstar defenseman is miffed a reunion didn't take place.
Hughes, 26, made his Minnesota Wild debut Sunday, scoring a goal in 26:55 to help his new club to a 6-2 win over Boston shortly after being dealt by the Vancouver Canucks.
Tocchet, of course, was one of Hughes's head coaches in Vancouver, and the duo forged a considerable bond in their short time together.
The Flyers are said to be one of the teams that checked in on Hughes, but never seriously engaged with any kind of true offers.
"There are other teams that probably could have thrown in certain packages like that, too, but at the end of the day they didn’t want to do that or they didn’t want to trade two or three assets from their team," Hughes was quoted as saying by The Hockey News' Dylan Loucks after the Wild's win over the Bruins.
Flyers Miss Out on Egregious Quinn Hughes Trade
It's official: the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/philadelphia-flyers">Philadelphia Flyers</a> pulling off a Quinn Hughes trade is not going to happen, and they should be thankful it won't.
We know from Pierre LeBrun's recent reporting that the Flyers were one of those teams who were unwilling to part ways with the assets required to pull off a Hughes trade, which, by extension, leads us to believe that Porter Martone and Matvei Michkov, at a minimum, were off the table for the Canucks.
If Hughes and Tocchet really do still talk, and especially after that trade went down, it's easy to imagine how Hughes found out the Flyers checked in and said 'Thanks, but no thanks' after clocking the asking price.
The Wild, obviously, went all-in with their package of Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren, Marco Rossi, and a first-round pick, which the Flyers cannot necessarily even match with 1:1 replacements.
Perhaps that, due to the lack of a center like Rossi and a defender like Buium, the Flyers would have needed to pay an even greater cost to compensate for the difference.
3 Flyers Defense Targets With Quinn Hughes Off The Board
Quinn Hughes is officially no longer a potential option for the Flyers. Due to this, let's look at three defensemen who the Flyers should consider targeting instead.
Regardless, though, the Flyers, as well as the New Jersey Devils, stand out as two teams Hughes could be referencing in his latest comments based solely on the lines of communication he has within the two organizations.
It's likely we never find out which team(s) the 2024 Norris Trophy forsakes for not believing in him more relative to the trade cost, but it does, for better or for worse, say a lot about the Flyers' rebuild thus far and how far they're willing to make their draft picks, prospects, and young players stretch to go get a superstar in the name of success.