'I just feel gratitude': Hughes reflects on Canucks tenure ahead of return

SEATTLE — Relationships are complicated. Except for the relationship between Brady Tkachuk and the Ottawa Senators’ fan base, which was focused in sharp simplicity this week by the player’s return to bedlam — one smirking black hat wading into a sea of white ones.

The relationship between Quinn Hughes and fans of the Vancouver Canucks should be much more nuanced; his unprecedented achievements and devotion to the franchise during his first six seasons in one of the National Hockey League’s most challenging markets weighed against the American’s refusal to commit to a contract extension and management’s subsequent decision 10 months ago to trade him to the Minnesota Wild.

A nightly human highlight reel of otherworldly edgework and puck-handling, Hughes was not only the best defenceman in Canucks history but, given his immediate rise to stardom — winning the Norris Trophy at age 24 — is probably the franchise’s best ever player, period.

But he was also captain of a Canucks team that former president Jim Rutherford trumpeted for its dysfunction. At the end of last year’s cataclysmic season, Rutherford also said Hughes wouldn’t have re-signed under any circumstances. The head of hockey operations essentially drove a steamroller back and forth over Hughes until he was flattened like Wile E. Coyote.

Hughes also committed the unpardonable sin of helping Team USA beat Canada in the gold-medal game at the Olympics, a couple of months after his trade back to America.

Already widely vilified online in Vancouver, where anything Hughes-negative makes great clickbait, the defenceman from Michigan (via Toronto) will be greeted by a degree of hostility Sunday when he steps on the ice at Rogers Arena from the visitors’ bench for the first time.

“I think that part of the reason I love Vancouver is the passion, and I don't take anything personal,” Hughes told a couple of print reporters Saturday morning in Seattle, where the Wild were preparing to play the Kraken in the first half of back-to-back weekend games. “How I'm received tomorrow won't affect how I feel about Vancouver tomorrow, the next day, or five years down the line. Like, I just feel gratitude, and one night ... won't affect 6 ½ years of how I enjoyed that place.”

Earlier, in front of cameras and a small media scrum, he said: “I was really lucky to start my career there, and just being in a Canadian market was a really special thing for me, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. And 6 ½ years there. You know, a lot of the reasons I'm the person I am and the player I am is because of the experiences I had in Vancouver. And the organization was always amazing with me, starting with ownership and Jim Rutherford, (former GM) Jim Benning, all the coaches I've had there, my teammates. A lot of people there allowed me to flourish and grow. However I'm going to be received tomorrow, (I will) always look back and be grateful and appreciative of the experiences I had.”

Whatever happens, Sunday will be another experience.

Let’s 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’t bolt in the dead of summer from an excellent, ascending team that was in the playoffs last spring.

“They (management) came to us two years before the end of his contract, one year before they could extend him, and asked us, ‘You know, where’s Quinn’s head at?’” agent Pat Brisson explained on Friday. “And we were clear: We weren’t ready to commit to an extension. We still haven’t committed to one. But we never asked for a trade.

“So the Canucks made a decision based on the information that they had to trade him because they didn’t want to risk losing him a year or two later. We worked together. But we never asked for a trade. Quinn never said, ‘I want out of here.’ I mean, people don't know behind the scenes what takes place in these conversations.”

“Not one guy knew that he was getting traded when he got traded,” Brock Boeser, Hughes’ friend and former Canucks teammate, told Sportsnet. “He 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.”

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.

It’s probably worth remembering that the other choices to replace Bo Horvat as captain in 2023 were J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson.

That kind of context gets brushed aside sometimes, like when some people cherry-picked Hughes’ quote last April, when the Canucks visited Minnesota, that “Honestly, I don’t really know a lot of their guys,” when he had been asked specifically about the playing tendencies of former teammates.

The rest of the quote, lesser-known, was: “I 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’t there.”

Still, his edited comment enraged some in the market and certainly rankled a couple of his younger former teammates.

See, dysfunction.

“Quinn was not responsible for any of that,” defenceman Luke Schenn, now in his third stint with the Canucks, said this week. “He showed up every night and gave this team 25 or 30 minutes of his absolute best, and produced each and every night. When you’re 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).

“I don't think it was ever like an ultimatum (to trade Hughes); they probably asked him what he was thinking and — give him credit — he was honest. He could have lied. And they made a decision. Everyone’s 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.”

Yes, barring injury, Hughes will probably be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, which means the Canucks should be retiring his jersey one day. 

Discuss that one amongst yourselves.

But remember, that was the deciding criteria for retiring Pavel Bure’s 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.

“I tried my best; I'm at peace with that,” Hughes said Saturday. “Like 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.

“The 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.”