The Vancouver Canucks have parted ways with their captain, Quinn Hughes.

While it’s a stinger to trade a top-10 player in the NHL, Hughes came with a hefty price tag. The Canucks acquired centre Marco Rossi, winger Liam Öhgren, defenceman Zeev Buium, and a 2026 first-round pick.

Let’s take a quick look at these pieces the Canucks acquired in the trade.

Rossi is a 24-year-old, left-shot centreman. He set a career-high in goals (24), assists (36) and points (60), serving as the Wild’s number one centre. He mostly played with Mats Zuccarello and split his time with either Kirill Kaprizov or Matthew Boldy on the left side. In the dot, Rossi has a career 46.1% faceoff percentage. However, we have seen him improve over the previous two seasons, with a 46.8% last season and up to 48.6% this season. Is it great? Not when you’re below 50%. But it undoubtedly is an upgrade to what they’re icing down the middle currently.

The biggest gripe about Rossi is his size: 5-foot-9, 182-lbs. While that height isn’t ideal down the middle, Rossi has still been able to produce, as he showed last season.

The Canucks were interested in Rossi over the summer before the Wild extended him to a three-year, $5 million AAV contract. They finally get their hands on him.

Rossi has been out of the Wild’s lineup since November 11, after sustaining an injury in a game against the San Jose Sharks. He has been skating on his own, and the Wild deemed him a “possibility” for Sunday, meaning he could be an option for the Canucks on Sunday morning against the New Jersey Devils. When he does step into the lineup, he will slot in as the team’s top centre until Elias Pettersson returns.

Buium, 20, is a left-shot defenceman and is viewed as the centrepiece of the return for the Canucks. The rookie has three goals and 11 assists for 14 points while averaging 18:28 minutes per game through the first 31 games of his career. Buium has spent time quarterbacking the Wild’s top power play, collecting eight points on the man advantage.

He’s not going to be a Hughes replacement, not many could be, but I would expect Buium to take Hughes’ spot on the top pair with Filip Hronek to start, and potentially work on the top unit power play.

The Wild selected Buium 12th overall pick in the 2024 NHL draft. Coming into the season, The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler had Zeev Buium fifth in tier one of his top-100 drafted NHL prospects rankings.

Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis had Buium ranked as the top Wild prospect coming into the season, and had this today regarding the new Canuck defenceman:

“This is a player who is built for big-game moments. You look at those two World Junior Championships and his Under-18 title, too. Buium won an NCAA championship and he almost won another. This is a guy who has played so much meaningful hockey already at such a young age. I would like him to be a bit stronger, and I feel like if he just had an okay season in the NCAA then he probably would have gone back for another year to focus on being more physical. Many people like to compare Buium’s college career to that of Cale Makar. Makar was more important to UMass than Buium was to Denver, but Buium was more productive. He had two of the best seasons by a defenseman that I’ve ever seen, and now he’s set for the spotlight in Minnesota.”

Donnie & Dhali’s Rick Dhaliwal spoke with Buium, who’s excited to come to Vancouver and show what he’s got:

Dhaliwal shared that Buium will be joining the Canucks tomorrow.

Öhgren is a 21-year-old winger who has yet to find his game at the NHL level this season. Through 18 regular season games with the Wild this season, Öhgren is still searching for his first point of the season with a minus-three rating. However, Öhgren has been playing limited minutes in a fourth-line role, averaging sub-10 minutes per night.

The 2022 first-round pick has a connection to fellow Canuck Jonathan Lekkerimäki, playing with each other all through the Swedish junior ranks, as well as at the World Junior Championships in 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. Öhgren served as the Captain for Team Sweden in 2023-24, when Lekkerimäki took home MVP honours.

As for where he slots in when he makes his Canucks debut, it would likely be in a bottom-six role for the time being. But if more players are moved out, Öhgren will have an opportunity to move up and produce higher in the lineup.

Ellis ranked Öhgren fifth in his piece on the Wild’s top-10 prospects list over the summer, with this write-up on the forward:

“Öhgren had a 24-game stint with the Wild last year, putting up a modest five points while playing around 11 minutes a night. It wasn’t much, but I felt like he made the most of it near the end of his time with the club, doing a lot to keep the puck in the offensive zone. Öhgren was great in Iowa, serving as one of the team’s premier offensive leaders despite playing around half the season. I like what he does with the puck, and while he isn’t aggressive, Öhgren seems to make his linemates better with his work ethic and passing ability. I think Öhgren can become a top-six threat for the Wild, and I expect him to get much more ice time this season.”

The first-round pick acquired from the Wild is unprotected, according to PuckPedia.

Were you ever going to win a Quinn Hughes trade? No. Whenever you give up a player of Hughes’ calibre in a deal, you’re never going to come out on the right end of it. But to come out with three young, promising pieces – all of which were former first-round picks – and an unprotected first-round pick, this is a decent return in a move the club unfortunately had to make with Hughes likely not willing to extend long-term with the Canucks.