{"id":346227,"date":"2025-12-15T06:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T06:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346227\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T06:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T06:49:07","slug":"hughes-caps-whirlwind-48-hours-with-goal-in-wild-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346227\/","title":{"rendered":"Hughes caps whirlwind 48 hours with goal in Wild debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Quinn Hughes<\/a> knew how important hockey was in the state of Minnesota, but even he was taken aback by the instant excitement the Minnesota Wild fanbase provided for his debut, a 6-2 win against the Boston Bruins<\/a> at Grand Casino Arena on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty special, honestly,\u201d Hughes said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting that, but that was very cool. I know it\u2019s a hockey market, but that was exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a whirlwind 48 hours for the 26-year-old defenseman, who was in the New York metropolitan area with the Vancouver Canucks when he found out he was being traded to the Wild in exchange for defenseman Zeev Buium<\/a>, forwards Marco Rossi<\/a> and Liam Ohgren<\/a>, and a first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n

Such a whirlwind in fact that he forgot his hockey equipment in New Jersey, where the Canucks played on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about,\u201d joked Hughes, whose gear arrived on Sunday morning. \u201cIt was definitely on me, but I\u2019m thankful I got some really good people in my corner that were able to make it work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Hughes did bring with him to Minnesota was a lot of hype.<\/p>\n

Selected by Vancouver with the No. 7 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, Hughes had 432 points (61 goals, 371 assists) in 459 games with the Canucks, which is the most among defensemen in their history. He won the Norris Trophy as the League’s top defenseman in 2023-24, when he had an NHL career-high 92 points (17 goals, 75 assists) in 82 games, and he was a finalist again for the award last season, when he had 76 points (16 goals, 60 assists) in 68 games.<\/p>\n

At the time of the trade this season, Hughes was leading the Canucks with 23 points (two goals, 21 assists) in 26 games.<\/p>\n

So, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Hughes made an immediate impact on the score sheet on Sunday. Just 54 seconds into the third period, he received a pass from Ryan Hartman<\/a>, skated into the high slot and scored with a shot that beat Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman<\/a> five-hole to push the lead to 4-0.<\/p>\n

“I mean, when you have a player of his capabilities coming in, it\u2019s just he does so many things in a game, whether it\u2019s the plays he\u2019s able to make, and he was on with different guys. I thought he and Brock (Faber) were obviously a good pair,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “Regardless of the situations he was in, he has that ability where he can make plays and he puts people — the thing with a puck-moving guy like him is he puts people in good spots. If they\u2019re there, he\u2019s going to hit them. But also he can make some plays when he\u2019s got puck support around him that allows things to be able to develop.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PAUL, Minn. — Quinn Hughes knew how important hockey was in the state of Minnesota, but even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-346227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}