NHL
Quinn Hughes
Traded
Quinn Hughes and Conor Garland were Canucks teammates for parts of five seasons. David Berding / Getty Images
NEWARK, N.J. — The post-Quinn Hughes era of Vancouver Canucks hockey began on Saturday afternoon in Newark, N.J., when the Canucks took the ice for practice.
It was a subdued session, filled with new faces and quick installs. Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi and Liam Öhgren — the three young players Vancouver acquired from Minnesota for Hughes on Friday night — were already present. All three look set to make their Canucks debuts on Sunday, although Rossi remains on Injured Reserve (IR). The club will still have to make a roster move in order to activate him, and he wasn’t made available to talk with the media following Saturday’s practice.
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At the rink, you wouldn’t necessarily have known that this was a franchise that had just undergone a seismic directional shift that shocked the hockey world less than 24 hours prior. Or that this organization had just fitfully entered a new, transitional rebuilding phase of its team-building cycle.
No, for signs of that, you would’ve had to be at the mall before practice, where you might’ve caught forward Conor Garland — one of Hughes’ best friends on the team — getting in a pre-practice walk all by himself, where he would’ve usually been shooting the breeze with his former teammate.
“Obviously, take away the hockey, for sure it’s tough,” Garland said of how he reacted to the news. “I don’t have any brothers, but we were close. Day to day is going to be a bit odd for a little bit.
“Actually, the guys were giving me a hard time today, like, I’m walking around the mall by myself, and that’s usually our time. Last night I was in my room by myself writing down all the right-handed defencemen in the league, and that’s what we’d usually be doing together. Like arguing, ‘Who would you take?’”
This is a team that’s had more than its fair share of surprise departures over the past few years. From Bo Horvat to J.T. Miller and now Hughes, the Canucks have seen an unusual number of star-level players, widely believed to be part of the club’s core, depart suddenly via trade. While that’s been difficult for fans to process, and has arguably compromised the team’s short-term competitive integrity, it’s at least given Canucks veterans some practice when it comes to picking up the pieces.
“We’ve got to move on as a group,” Garland said. “We got some really good pieces back. I played with Zeev at the Worlds, and he’s a winner. I’ve been a big fan of Marco’s from afar, and I don’t know much about Liam Öhgren, but he’s a big boy.
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“We haven’t won nearly enough at the bottom of the standings, so good players kind of have to go out when that happens. But it’s tough to take a step back for sure, everybody wants to win.”
Garland is among a trio of veteran Canucks players, all three of them American, along with Thatcher Demko and Brock Boeser, who signed extensions to remain with Vancouver long-term in the summer. Boeser left practice early due to illness and wasn’t available to speak to reporters, but both Garland and Demko were defiant in insisting that their decision-making wasn’t informed by whether or not Hughes was a Canucks player going forward.
“Yes, it’s hard that Quinn got traded, yes, we’re trying to adjust, and yes, we’re just going to try to win tomorrow,” Demko began, rifling off the basics quickly while noting that the bus was scheduled to leave in three minutes. “We good?”
“It’s a start,” I responded.
“I think we always knew that Huggy might be leaving; it would be pretty naive to think otherwise,” Demko elaborated when asked about Hughes’ departure and what it means for him and the team in the big picture. “I have my contract, he’s where he is, I think we got a few good players out of it. I don’t think this is like doomsday or anything, I’d say it’s more of a pivot than a breakdown.”
“Your general manager is using words like rebuild, and I know that’s loaded …” I began by way of following up.
“I don’t watch the media.”
“So you don’t have any reaction …”
“No, I don’t really care, you know, that’s the business side,” Demko responded. “We have a job to do. My job isn’t to worry about what they’re saying or doing. We have to show up every day and try to win hockey games, and we’re not doing a good enough job right now.”
“So you priced that uncertainty in when you decided to sign?” I asked.
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“Yeah, it’s pro hockey. I mean, you have no idea what’s going to happen. Did you think Millsy would get traded last year?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Yeah, so I knew I wanted to be a Canuck. There’s no ifs or buts about that. Like I wanted to be a Canuck, so whatever that looked like, I’m in for it.”
Garland echoed that sentiment. His decision to extend with Vancouver wasn’t based on some sort of promise not to rebuild, and it wasn’t as if the storyline that Hughes’ Canucks future was cloudy was a surprise to any of these veteran players anyway.
“I think when I extended I told Quinn, ‘I hope you’re here for the next 20 years, but if you’re not, I’m extending no matter what,’” Garland told The Athletic.
“I believed in the team. Jim (Rutherford) is in the Hall of Fame for a reason; he’s really smart. Patrik (Allvin) is really smart. I did believe in them in signing on, and I believed in the pieces we had. And I loved the city.
“So it’s not like I was just signing on because of my friend. I’d love for him to still be here, but that’s not the case. Did I think it was going to happen this soon? Probably not. But if I could go back, I’d still sign because I believed in the direction at that time.”
The Canucks ended up with credible offers from six teams, as my The Athletic colleague Pierre LeBrun reported and which I can confirm, five of whom play in the Eastern Conference and Minnesota.
What’s clear is that Rutherford and the Canucks kept in touch with Hughes’ representatives with CAA, principally Pat Brisson. And while Hughes had no formal rights or clauses in the matter, this trade didn’t function like a routine trade of a player who wasn’t eligible for no-trade or no-move protection, given that Hughes was still a year out from unrestricted free agency.
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This isn’t altogether uncommon, especially for players of Hughes’ stature. It’s not dissimilar, in fact, from how the Canucks worked with Miller’s representatives on the trade that ultimately sent him to the New York Rangers, or the trade Rutherford made sending Marc-Andre Fleury to the Vegas Golden Knights during his time in Pittsburgh, or even the infamous Brendan Shanahan for Paul Coffey trade that Rutherford executed during his time with the Hartford Whalers.
In any event, both the Canucks professional and amateur scouting departments played a significant role in evaluating which package Vancouver preferred, and the club’s analytics department was heavily involved as well. Wild general manager Bill Guerin noted that he was informed that Vancouver had picked his offer while he was making meatballs, which is a fascinating data point into how Rutherford and the Canucks conducted this auction.
The club solicited multiple serious offers, evaluated them rigorously internally and worked to some degree with Hughes’ camp on ensuring that it sent its captain and the greatest defenceman in franchise history to an agreeable destination.
Garland played with Buium, the most significant piece Vancouver received from Minnesota in the trade, at the World Championship.
More than anything hockey-wise, what stood out to Garland about his new teammate at worlds was Buium’s preternatural confidence.
“Before the semifinal game against Sweden,” Garland recalled on Saturday. “He came up to me, and he’s like, oh, I’ve never lost at anything. I have five gold medals. He said ‘We’re going to win.’
“I was like, wow, this guy is 19 years old, coming up to three veterans at the table. His dad was telling my dad the same thing, like, ‘He’s won everything,’ meanwhile, I’ve never won anything, so I was just nervous.
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“He was just as confident as could be going out for overtime too, and I remember thinking him and (Anaheim Ducks forward) Cutter Gauthier were way too calm for their age.
“So I was really impressed. And Zeev was the turning point for us in the quarterfinal game, took over a shift and made a great play … You just saw his ability in a big game.”
When this story was relayed to him, Buium responded, “I don’t know if I was that arrogant!” with a laugh.
“But I probably said something along those lines. Up to that point, I hadn’t lost much; I suppose I’d lost in the National Championship semifinal, but in IIHF play, I hadn’t lost. So, selfishly, it’s more about the teams that I’ve played on have won. It was just a joke.
“It’s not the Stanley Cup, but when you get to play in those big games, you learn how to handle yourself and learn how to control the environment of the team. You get that sense of what’s a team that’s going to win, and what’s a team that isn’t.”
Buium’s confidence and overall character are something that the Canucks weighted heavily in targeting him as part of the Hughes return. It should stand him well in Vancouver, especially given that it isn’t easy to be the defenceman who was acquired for Hughes.
If we assume that Rossi will make his Vancouver debut on Sunday afternoon, and that appears to be the plan, the Canucks will have to make an additional roster move to activate their new top-six calibre centre off IR.
The club placed Lukas Reichel on waivers Saturday and designated him for assignment. They’ll have a few other options — both waiver-exempt options, and players that will require waivers — but a team source told The Athletic that a trade to create the requisite roster space to activate Rossi is unlikely before puck drop on Sunday.
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One other option to consider is that the club could place centre Elias Pettersson on IR, which would buy the Canucks some time. Pettersson practised with the team on Saturday, but isn’t tracking to be an option to play against New Jersey. Vancouver could place Pettersson onto IR retroactive to Dec. 6, which would give the club the space it needs to activate Rossi and wouldn’t impact his availability for Tuesday night’s game against the Rangers.
As for Öhgren, who is waiver-exempt, it sounds like the plan is to give him a look for at least a couple of games. Both Allvin and head coach Adam Foote seem to want an opportunity to evaluate where Öhgren’s game is tracking at the NHL level before considering a developmental reassignment to Abbotsford.
Ultimately, the club may send Öhgren down to the AHL for the purpose of permitting him to build confidence and dominate alongside his friend and former SHL linemate Jonathan Lekkerimäki. Giving the promising, young power winger the opportunity to play big minutes in the AHL and then call him up as the club continues to trade out veteran pieces ahead of the NHL trade deadline is an appealing developmental route that the Canucks are strongly considering.
Thomas Drance covers the Vancouver Canucks as a senior writer for The Athletic. He is also the co-host of the Canucks Hour on Sportsnet 650. His career in hockey media — as a journalist, editor and author — has included stops at Canucks Army, The Score, Triumph Publishing, the Nation Network and Sportsnet. Previously, he was vice president, public relations and communications, for the Florida Panthers for three seasons. Follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasDrance
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