On Sunday, Quinn Hughes made his Minnesota Wild debut after the Vancouver Canucks sent their package to the State of Hockey in a Friday night blockbuster deal. The Wild won by a final score of 6-2, defeating the Boston Bruins. Hughes scored a goal in his 26:55 of ice time. Following the game, Hughes spoke to assembled media and was very candid about his thought process during the events leading up to his trade to the Wild, and where his head is at now that he’s with his new team.

“It’s been a whirlwind for sure,” said Hughes of the last 48 hours. “I’m just looking forward to getting my feet on the ground and getting with the team, getting a day-to-day lifestyle here. Definitely the last 48 hours have been a lot, but I was excited I was able to play today.”

On how involved he was in the trade process and ending up in Minnesota:

“I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, but I have the ultimate respect for Jim Rutherford and Francesco Aquilini and the Aquilini family. I mean, they were first class with everything that was going on, and obviously, it was a tough situation, but it felt like it was time, and I think Jim did too. But Jim and Pat — Pat Brisson, my agent — he was a beast. I’m very lucky to have him. But they were kind of talking a lot about places I might feel comfortable and you know, Jim was amazing with that. He cared about the person. He wanted me to go where he thought I would be happy.”

Hughes on his talks with the Canucks prior to the season:

“There was some talks a little bit this summer and, you know, I love the guys there and, you know, some of those guys are my best friends. You want to be successful and so [I] came into the year open-minded and wanted to make it work and obviously wanted to have a great year. But with the injuries and the direction it was going, it wasn’t happening. And I think Jim knew where my head was at a little bit, and we got to talking — or Jim and Pat [Brisson] got to talking — a couple weeks ago, and it kind of went from there.”

Hughes said he had “a pretty good idea” that the Canucks’ Thursday night game against the Buffalo Sabres would be his last game as a Canuck. Hughes was able to go for dinner in New York — the Canucks travelled on Friday morning for their game in New Jersey — with his Canucks teammates and said his goodbyes before hopping on Wild owner Craig Leipold’s private jet to head to Minnesota.

“I had some great memories there and some really good friendships. So it was obviously tough, but I honestly couldn’t be more excited for this chapter,” Hughes said.

As Hughes begins the next stage of his career, the new question on everyone’s mind is whether he will indeed extend with the Wild, who paid a premium in trade assets to bring him in.

“I mean, extremely open minded,” Hughes said when asked how open-minded he’d be to extending with Minnesota.  “They’ve got an amazing core. I’ve only been here four hours, but getting to know some of the guys and you know, how energetic and positive guys are and then Minnesota being so close to Michigan and just the state of hockey and the passion here, just seeing how the fans reacted to me as well in warm ups… And then obviously I got a lot of time for Billy [Wild GM Bill Guerin] for, you know, quote unquote, sacking up and making the deal like he did and just how he valued me. There are other teams that probably could have thrown in certain packages like that, too, but at the end of the day, they didn’t want to do that, or they didn’t want to trade two or three assets from their team as Billy did. And so I’ll remember that. And that means a lot to me that Billy did that.”

In return for their captain, the Canucks acquired prized prospect defenceman Zeev Buium, 24-year-old Marco Rossi, 21-year-old Liam Ohgren, and the Wild’s 2026 first round pick. The consensus in league-wide circles is that the Canucks wouldn’t have gotten a package featuring that much value from any other team in the league.

The Canucks are in Minnesota on April 2nd, the final time the two teams will face each other this season.