Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\nWhatever happens, Sunday will be another experience.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just be honest, though: Hughes is not Tkachuk. Hughes never made false promises about staying in Vancouver or chided reporters for even asking about the possibility of him leaving. And he didn\u2019t bolt in the dead of summer from an excellent, ascending team that was in the playoffs last spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey (management) came to us two years before the end of his contract, one year before they could extend him, and asked us, \u2018You know, where\u2019s Quinn\u2019s head at?\u2019\u201d agent Pat Brisson explained on Friday. \u201cAnd we were clear: We weren\u2019t ready to commit to an extension. We still haven\u2019t committed to one. But we never asked for a trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the Canucks made a decision based on the information that they had to trade him because they didn\u2019t want to risk losing him a year or two later. We worked together. But we never asked for a trade. Quinn never said, \u2018I want out of here.\u2019 I mean, people don’t know behind the scenes what takes place in these conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot one guy knew that he was getting traded when he got traded,\u201d Brock Boeser, Hughes\u2019 friend and former Canucks teammate, told Sportsnet. \u201cHe didn’t create, you know, a big drama-based thing around our locker room. Guys were shocked when he got moved; we weren’t ready for it. But I think the way he went about it was the right way. He didn’t cause the focus to be on him, and he was still doing everything he could to help us win games right up to the moment he got moved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes is guilty of captaining a team that imploded, failing spectacularly to live up to the promise the Canucks showed as playoff-bubble Cinderellas in 2020, and again in 2024 as a 109-point team driven by a core of mid-20s players.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably worth remembering that the other choices to replace Bo Horvat as captain in 2023 were J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson.<\/p>\n
That kind of context gets brushed aside sometimes, like when some people cherry-picked Hughes\u2019 quote last April, when the Canucks visited Minnesota, that \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t really know a lot of their guys,\u201d when he had been asked specifically about the playing tendencies of former teammates.<\/p>\n
The rest of the quote, lesser-known, was: \u201cI played with some of the young guys there, but for three or four months. A lot of the guys I was there with for the meat of my six years aren\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, his edited comment enraged some in the market and certainly rankled a couple of his younger former teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuinn was not responsible for any of that,\u201d defenceman Luke Schenn, now in his third stint with the Canucks, said this week. \u201cHe showed up every night and gave this team 25 or 30 minutes of his absolute best, and produced each and every night. When you\u2019re in difficult situations and you’re the best player, obviously everyone’s going to be pointing the finger at you. But there’s no way he would ever be responsible for that (dysfunction).<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think it was ever like an ultimatum (to trade Hughes); they probably asked him what he was thinking and \u2014 give him credit \u2014 he was honest. He could have lied. And they made a decision. Everyone\u2019s allowed to voice their opinion. In my opinion, he’s the best defenceman to ever wear this jersey, without question. And at the end of the day, he’s working on a Hall of Fame career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, barring injury, Hughes will probably be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, which means the Canucks should be retiring his jersey one day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Discuss that one amongst yourselves.<\/p>\n
But remember, that was the deciding criteria for retiring Pavel Bure\u2019s No. 10 in 2013, 15 years after the player who first demanded a trade from Vancouver during his second season finally forced his exit from the Canucks by walking on a contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried my best; I’m at peace with that,\u201d Hughes said Saturday. \u201cLike truly, I gave everything I had. If you can’t watch my game in my fifth season, my sixth season, and understand that, then I really don’t have much to say. I don’t feel like I need to prove myself. When I look in the mirror, I gave it everything I had as far as the captaincy stuff. There was obviously a lot going on, but I tried my best with that, too. And I think that all the guys would say that as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one thing I would say is that sometimes I’ll see (people claim) that I wasn’t trying at the end or whatnot. Like, I was playing 30 minutes a night. I was doing everything I could. The only thing you could say is I probably pushed too hard. So if you want to say that, I’m good with that. But anyone that says I gave up or wasn’t trying, you know, I’m a 5-10, 175-pound defenceman; I didn’t get here because of my lack of competitiveness. Personally, I gave it everything I had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Relationships are complicated. Except for the relationship between Brady Tkachuk and the Ottawa Senators\u2019 fan base,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-945544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945544","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=945544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"32](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792920976_942_32-Thoughts-podcast-Elliotte-Friedman-Kyle-Bukauskas-640x360.jpg\")
32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n