VANCOUVER — After the summer to process a winter of upheaval with the Vancouver Canucks, captain Quinn Hughes said Tuesday he hasn’t made any decisions about his long-term future with the team.
Eligible to sign a contract extension next summer (or not), the 25-year-old superstar told Sportsnet he was disappointed about coach Rick Tocchet leaving but excited that Adam Foote is succeeding him.
Hughes is all-in on playing in Vancouver this season and helping the team return to the Stanley Cup playoffs after last season was undermined by injuries to almost everyone, and the soap-opera-like sideshow surrounding top forwards Elias Pettersson and now ex-Canuck J.T. Miller.
After missing last season’s 4 Nations Face-Off tournament due to his own injuries, the defenceman from Michigan also desperately wants to play for the United States Olympic team in February but said all he is focused on right now is getting ready for training camp.
“Not even training camp,” he corrected himself. “I’m focused on the skate test before camp, so I can push my teammates so that everyone’s ready going into camp.
“One thing I’m really good at — or have gotten good at — is I’m very present. I can’t even sign for another year, so there’s nothing I can do. As far as the noise (about his future), I can handle the noise. That’s why I’m the captain of the team, because I can handle these things and I can play at an elite level and it doesn’t matter what’s going on around me.
“And as far as the noise around my teammates, I’m going to try to help everyone else, too, and be as good a leader as I can be. Noise doesn’t bother me. It’s a long year, and I’m just going to be day-to-day and focus on the short term. That’s the truth, honestly.”
The 2024 Norris Trophy winner is an unrestricted free agent in two years, although the Canucks will need to know next summer what Hughes intends to do.
In his first in-depth interview since leaving Vancouver in April for the off-season, Hughes was emphatic he isn’t planning his future beyond 2025-26.
“Every year brings its different challenges,” he said. “Two of my best buddies (Canuck teammates Conor Garland and Brock Boeser) just signed in Vancouver long-term. I will say last year was not fun; it just wasn’t. But I’m a really competitive guy … and last year was a failure, so I’m trying to bring my best. Try to be a great leader and help my team get in the playoffs. Who knows what we can do and who knows how I’ll be feeling this time next year? It’s still a year away.”
At their best, Hughes and Colorado’s Cale Makar play at a higher level than any other defencemen in the National Hockey League. By this standard, Hughes struggled toward the end of last season, despite finishing with 76 points in 68 games and leading the Canucks in scoring by 26 points. Hughes said he dealt with a torn ligament in his hand, then a torn oblique muscle and finally a groin strain.
In April, he made it clear how badly he wanted Tocchet to stay. And three weeks later, the reigning NHL coach of the year informed the Canucks he would not re-sign. Tocchet was soon hired by the Philadelphia Flyers.
It was the final gut punch to the Canucks in a season filled with them.
“I really did like Rick,” Hughes said. “I thought he was a really great coach. He loves hockey, very passionate about the game — maybe more than any coach I’ve had. He was a great person that cared about his players. But a lot of things that were exhausting for me (last season) were probably twice as exhausting for him. He had a lot on his plate. It was tough to see him go. But saying that, he earned the right to go where he wanted to. There was also a couple of things that, I think, he had on his mind about family that we won’t get into. Not everyone knows the ins and outs of everyone’s life. But what I can say is Rick deeply cared about the Canucks and wanted to make this a winning organization.”
And what about Foote, Hughes’ blue-line coach who was quickly promoted to replace Tocchet and around whom a new staff has been constructed?
“I had my two best years with Footy as my D-coach,” Hughes said. “He’s another guy that’s a great person and really cares about his players, very technical on the defensive side, intelligent, got a lot of experience. Another guy you can walk into his office and shoot the sh– with. What I’ve seen, he’s trying to get the best out of each guy and maybe make guys play better than what they think they’re capable of. Hopefully, he can do that with everyone on the roster. I know he’s extremely excited to be the head coach.”
Soon after he was hired, Foote met with Hughes, Pettersson and goalie Thatcher Demko in Detroit to have dinner and play golf and talk about the team and leadership. Pettersson flew over from Sweden for the summit.
There were subsequent Zoom meetings between Foote and the Canucks’ larger leadership group.
Foote has been so eager to grow relationships with players that Hughes, needing to decompress, had to tell his new head coach at one point that he wouldn’t be answering the phone for a couple of weeks.
“If I didn’t tell him that, he’d have been on the phone with me every four or five days,” Hughes said. “He’s really great at communicating and no one’s more excited for the season than him.
“He’s trying to make us a better team. It’s so hard to add pieces from the outside, so he’s trying to empower everyone on the inside and make everyone inside better. He can teach us and bring us closer. Let’s be honest: we’re not going to be the most-skilled team, but we can have the hardest-working team. We can have a team. I mean, you look at Florida and they have a ton of talent, but they’re a team. And that’s something we can be.”
But to be a good team, something like the 109-point version of the Canucks from two seasons ago, Vancouver needs Demko to be healthy (after playing only 23 games last season) and Pettersson to be much better than he was when he opened his franchise-record $92.8-million contract with 45 points in 64 games.
“You know, I’ve been Petey’s biggest supporter throughout everything,” Hughes said. “When I was a rookie and he was a sophomore, we were kind of similar guys in that we were both on the quiet side, reserved … but we both loved hockey. And we were both smaller guys growing up and had to find a way to be good, and I think that was through our hockey sense and the way we saw the game.
“As far as Petey, I mean, we need him. You don’t get to the level Petey was at (191 points over the previous two seasons) without having extreme dedication and focus and some things inside you. I’ve seen it from him, and I think he’s going to be great. I think he’s happy, think he’s had a great summer and I’m looking forward to seeing him. Do I think he’s going to have a better year? Yeah, because he’s a really good player. But it’s going to be up to him about how good a year he has.”
For all that went wrong for the Canucks last season, they still amassed 90 points, missing the playoffs by six. No wonder Hughes and his teammates think they can bounce back.
“It can’t always be sunshine and rainbows,” he said. “If you look at everyone in the league, what makes it so special is that there are so many great players and there is adversity that everyone goes through to get to the ultimate goal. It was a demanding year, but I feel like I grew more from last year than the year I won the Norris. I learned a lot about myself as a human being, and what kind of leader I want to be. What kind of person I want to be.
“You definitely don’t want to live in the past. We’re already on a new season and that’s where my head is at, and probably after this interview I won’t be talking about last season again. It took me a while (to get over it) because it was really disappointing. More than that, it was just really not fun. It was an exhausting year. But I really do think it’s going to make everyone in our group stronger — mentally stronger. Hopefully, everyone has trained hard and is ready to go. I know I am.”
