DALLAS \u2014 Quinn Hughes, the Minnesota Wild\u2019s game-changer from the back end since arriving from the Vancouver Canucks in a mid-December blockbuster, missed his second consecutive practice on Friday with what coach John Hynes on Thursday said was an illness.<\/p>\n
Hynes said after Thursday\u2019s practice in St. Paul, Minn., that the star defenseman was expected to be on the team\u2019s charter in the afternoon to Dallas. However, Hughes did not fly to Dallas with the team. Instead, he is expected to fly to Dallas on Friday afternoon so he can play Game 1 Saturday evening against the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cOriginally he was gonna fly with the team, but I just think with the illness, I think more rest for him and just not have him on the plane (made sense),\u201d Hynes said after Friday\u2019s practice. \u201cSo he\u2019s en route to Dallas today. Our expectation is for him to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hynes confirmed that Hughes hasn\u2019t been on the ice since he logged 29 minutes, 58 seconds, in a loss at Nashville last Saturday. He flew to St. Louis with the team after the game, but he didn\u2019t skate Monday morning, Tuesday morning or in the practices Thursday and Friday. He also didn\u2019t take part in the \u201cJersey off our backs\u201d event after Tuesday\u2019s regular-season finale against Anaheim.<\/p>\n
Hughes scored five goals and 53 points in 48 games for the Wild, a new single-season team record for points for defensemen. His 48 assists were also a single-season team record for defensemen. He reached 50 points in his 43rd game, becoming the fastest player to reach the 50-point mark in franchise history.<\/p>\n
Hughes\u2019 76 points in 74 games ranked fifth among NHL defensemen, and his 69 assists ranked second. Hughes led the league with an average ice time per game of 27:44 \u2014 more than a minute over Zach Werenski, who finished second.<\/p>\n
Because of that workload, Hynes said, \u201cI think mentally and physically, this little break is probably really good even though he\u2019s under the weather and not feeling well. But I just think, mentally, sometimes just getting away from it is good, but our expectation is he\u2019ll be ready to go (Saturday).\u201d<\/p>\n
In other news, Hynes said rookie Jesper Wallstedt will make his playoff debut over struggling veteran Filip Gustavsson in Game 1, and defenseman Zach Bogosian is expected to return from a lower-body injury. Bogosian has not played since April 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014 Quinn Hughes, the Minnesota Wild\u2019s game-changer from the back end since arriving from the Vancouver Canucks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4825,4828,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-590476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-dallas-stars","9":"tag-minnesota-wild","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}