VANCOUVER – As superheroes go, Quinn Hughes isn’t the most physically imposing. Luckily, he doesn’t have to be Superman or merely Bobby Orr to help save the Vancouver Canucks.
“Bobby Orr? I’m not really sure about that one,” Hughes said Wednesday when asked about a year-old reference from former college assistant coach Jeff Tambellini. “Tamby’s a nice guy and I’ll thank him for that, but I think that’s really far-fetched. I’m just going to try to play my game and make my teammates better and help my team get better.”
“Good for him,” Jim Hughes, Quinn’s dad, said after asking about his son’s first press conference as a professional. “Listen, there’s going to be a learning curve and the hype is a little off the charts for my liking. I think it’s a little bit silly. But I understand it’s a Canadian market; we lived in Toronto. People are passionate about hockey and that’s what makes a Canadian market special.”
And, at times, harder to play in.
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The biggest challenge for Hughes ahead of his debut for the Canucks is not the bruised foot that must clear an MRI exam before Vancouver lets the University of Michigan star on to the ice, but expectations that the dynamic defenceman is going to be the next Bobby Orr, or at least Brian Leetch or Scott Niedermayer, and that he will be one of those guys sometime this month.
The Canucks, of course, are desperate for help. They’ve had one regulation win in 17 games going into Wednesday night’s match against the New York Rangers, and are going to finish hopelessly out of the playoffs for a fourth straight season. You may have also heard the franchise has never won the Stanley Cup and next year celebrates its 50th anniversary in the NHL.
This piles a lot of pressure on Hughes, the five-foot-10 offensive defenceman who grew up an American in Toronto, where his father worked in player development for the Maple Leafs.
Pressure is further heightened by Elias Petterson’s remarkable rookie season, where the skilled, slight centre has soared past expectations that were already dauntingly high.
Hughes is one of the most exciting prospects in Canucks’ history, and may turn out to be a great NHL player perfectly suited to an evolving game that puts a premium on speed and puck movement.
But it’s extraordinarily unrealistic to believe he’s going to be that player now, as a 19-year-old thrown into the intensity of an NHL regular season’s stretch drive.
Canucks’ general manager Jim Benning told Hughes after signing him to an entry-level contract on Sunday, one day after Michigan’s disappointingly early elimination in the NCAA playoffs, that he should just be himself.
“I think you always get advice just to be you and stuff like that,” Hughes told reporters on Wednesday. “Until you go in there and figure it out for yourself, it’s pretty hard. I’ve just got to kind of get my feet wet here and figure out for myself what I can do and what I can’t do and try to play my game. I don’t need to be a hero or anything like that. There are a lot of really good players here and I’m just going to try to get them the puck.”
He’ll be a hero with the coaching staff if he does.
“I’m not going to put sky-high expectations on this guy,” Canucks’ head coach Travis Green said. “Is he going to be a power-play guy in the NHL? Yes, he is. But I don’t need him to have expectations where he has to come in and run the power play and be this guy who’s just going to turn it around all of a sudden overnight. It takes some time. My job is to make sure we just put the brakes on expectations. He’s got enough pressure on him as it is.”
As an 18-year-old, before the Canucks were elated to discover him still available with the seventh-overall pick of the draft last June, Hughes played for the United States at the senior world championships in May.
He was on Team USA at the world junior tournament this winter in Victoria and Vancouver, and at Michigan was a nightly target for college opponents. Hughes isn’t intimidated by a big stage.
If cleared medically, he’ll practise with the Canucks on Thursday and could be in their lineup Friday night against the New Jersey Devils at Rogers Arena.
“I’d like to see him for five or six weeks and then try to get him in,” Green joked about Hughes’ preparation. “I’m going to play him as soon as he can play. As soon as he’s healthy and ready to go, he’ll play. Let’s just get him on the ice, find out how his foot is and take it from there.”
Given how this season has gone for Vancouver and Michigan, there were probably times when both the Canucks and Hughes regretted the joint decision last summer that the blueliner should return for a second season of college hockey in order to get stronger and more mature.
“I think it’s been really good for me, not only on the ice but off the ice,” Hughes insisted. “Maturity, getting stronger, heavier, stuff like that. My game has gotten better, too. I probably could have started (in the NHL) in September, but there’s nothing wrong with my decision. It ended up being a good one.”
Quinn said he weighs about 175 pounds – five pounds more than when he was drafted – and Jim Hughes said his son is “1,000 per cent” mentally ready for this challenge.
“He is so excited for this and I think it’s a perfect fit,” Jim said. “It’s a dream of every kid, right? But we lived in the moment. Our kids were playing because they loved the sport. The motive was never the NHL; the motive was to keep getting better every day and keep loving the game. I always preached to our kids the value of hard work. So, Quinn has an opportunity now.”
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