It was a scene nearly every hockey parent has experienced at one time or another: Quinn Hughes showed up to his game, and realized he’d forgotten his hockey bag.
In his first meeting with the Minnesota media, Hughes sheepishly declined to get into the details, but it seems when one of his younger brothers delivered Quinn to a New Jersey airport for his private jet trek to the Twin Cities, his hockey bag was inadvertently left in the car.
The Wild’s crack staff was able to make the necessary moves to get Hughes’ gear to Grand Casino Arena in time for the 5 p.m. Sunday meeting with Boston, where Quinn scored his first goal in a Minnesota sweater.
With that drama out of the way, and one of the NHL’s best defensemen wearing green and red for at least the rest of this season and all of 2026-27, the next agenda item on the minds of fretful and cynical Minnesota sports fans is whether Hughes will sign a contract extension with the Wild, or is he essentially an 18-month rental?
An unavoidable part of this narrative is that Hughes’ two younger brothers, Luke and Jack, play for the New Jersey Devils. There has been much speculation of an on-ice family reunion someday, even before the blockbuster trade that brought Quinn to the Wild. Inevitably, Hughes was asked following the win over Boston how open-minded he would be about potentially staying in Minnesota beyond the spring of 2027.
“Extremely open-minded,” he said, heaping praise on his new co-workers and Wild fans. “They’ve got an amazing core. Just obviously I’ve only been here four hours, but getting to know some of the guys and how energetic and positive guys are and then Minnesota being so close to Michigan and just the State of Hockey and the passion here.”
He also admitted Wild general manager Bill Guerin being willing to part with four first-round draft picks to get Hughes in Minnesota shows a great deal about the belief they have in Hughes as a potential key to a deep playoff run.
“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,” Hughes said. “Billy did, so I’ll remember that and that means a lot to me that Billy did that.”
For the record, Jack Hughes’ contract in New Jersey runs through 2030, while the Devils have Luke signed through 2032.
Guerin, who until this season has not been able to do much in the way of free agency and trades due to salary cap constraints, is clearly enjoying his new fiscal freedom. After swinging the biggest trade in the 25-year history of this franchise, he was already thinking about Hughes’ future in Minnesota, and selling him on life and work in the State of Hockey.
“I love Minnesota. Our players love Minnesota,” Guerin said. “This is a great place to play.”
Just a few months ago, Guerin signed Kirill Kaprizov to the biggest deal in NHL history, bucking the narrative that teams like Vegas, Florida and Dallas are where every free agent wants to go because they have warmer weather and lower taxes than here. The general manager believes that the hockey, and the realistic chance to see your name engraved on the Stanley Cup, are the biggest draws on this team that is suddenly skyrocketing in the NHL power rankings.
“No matter what, whether you have good weather, good taxes, good – I don’t know, whatever – the hockey has to be good,” Guerin said. “You can live in the sun. You can live in these great places, or make a little more money, but if the hockey is not good, you won’t be happy. So that’s what really matters. If the hockey is good, if your job is good, you will be happy. And I think he’ll be really happy.”
It’s a small sample size, for sure. But after one game, one goal, one win and more than one extended ovation from the fans in St. Paul, there’s at least a chance Quinn Hughes has a longer-term future in Minnesota.
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