Canucks draft pick Hughes staying in college
The sun has set on super prospect Quinn Hughes starting the season with the Vancouver Canucks. That leaves the NHL team’s defence emanating a feeling of déjà vu.
Despite the Canucks openly courting Hughes and expressing desire to sign him, he has, instead, opted for the University of Michigan. His announcement comes just days after the Canucks spun into turmoil when former team president Trevor Linden split from the franchise.
With Linden goes the Canucks’ best-skating defenceman and most of the sizzle this blue-line had going for it heading into training camp.
After a disappointing season last year, the Canucks are poised to bring back the same defence. Collectively, they are not big, mobile or goal-scoring threats. But they do need to find some way to be significantly better if the Canucks have any shot at a noticeable bump up from the 73 points they compiled last year.
Hughes would have made them better, and a case can be made he’s already the second-best, leftside blue-liner in the organization behind veteran Alex Edler.
But there were a lot of numbers on the defensive side of this roster. On the left side alone, the Canucks have Edler, Michael Del Zotto, Derrick Pouliot and Ben Hutton. Making head coach Travis Green’s team ahead of at least two of those veterans was not going to be easy, and was no sure thing.
If Hughes didn’t make the team, he was looking at starting the season in Utica for the Canucks’ AHL affiliate. Players aren’t lining up to play for the Comets in Utica, but it arguably could have been the best spot for him to develop before making the leap to the NHL. But Hughes also saw his name tangled up this week in the Linden situation when it was revealed the former president had been pushing for the 18-year-old to go back to school and sign at the end of this NCAA season.
It was setting up a scenario where if he was hoisted into the NHL this fall and struggled, people would have been resurrecting the Linden divorce and saying things such as: “See, Trevor was right all along. They should have listened to him. Hughes wasn’t ready.”
That would not have been a great situation for the teenager to deal with.
When Michigan’s season ends, Hughes can sign with the Canucks much like both Brock Boeser and Adam Gaudette did before him. It would burn off the first year of his entry-level contract, but that’s a pretty common perk NHL teams are giving top prospects who are coming out of college.
Hughes’ decision was clearly not an easy one. There were a lot of moving parts including questions about whether he was physically ready for the big leagues and just how much time he’d be spending in Utica.
There are also stability questions ongoing about the Canucks because of the Linden fallout.
The Canucks predicted Hughes would have made his decision the first week of July, but instead it came down to the last week of the month.
There’s been some speculation Vancouver was trying to move out one of its defenceman to give Hughes more of a chance to make the team, but the reality is none of them held value.