After trading away Bo Horvat to the New York Islanders before the trade deadline last season, the Vancouver Canucks had a decision to make regarding their captain moving forward. Today, that decision has been made, as the team announced defenseman Quinn Hughes would be the 15th captain in franchise history.
In the end, for head coach Rick Tocchet and the rest of his staff, the decision likely came down to Hughes, Elias Pettersson, and J.T. Miller. All three players have leadership capabilities and thorough experience in the league up to this point, and all three players would have been realistic choices to take over the captaincy. Hughes will become the first defenseman for the Canucks to wear the ’C’ since Doug Lidster during the 1990-91 NHL season.
The seventh overall selection for Vancouver in the 2018 NHL Draft, Hughes would join the Canucks at the end of the 2018-19 season, finishing off his college career at the University of Michigan. A year later, in his first full season, Hughes thoroughly showed what he could do at the NHL level, scoring eight goals and 45 assists in 68 games. In that first full year for Hughes, he would finish second in Calder Memorial Trophy voting and even garnered some Norris Trophy votes at season’s end.
Since then, it has been much of the same for Hughes, racking up a high amount of assists, and generating quite a bit of offense from the blue line for Vancouver. This past season, in what would be his most impressive year up to this point, Hughes would score seven goals and 69 assists in 78 games, becoming a point-per-game player as a defenseman.
A three-time All-Star already in his career, one of Hughes’s best improvements has been his defensive metrics. At the beginning of his career, there were some questions surrounding his defensive proficiency from the blue line, improving his takeaway numbers, and holding strong possession numbers for much of his career.
Now, at almost 24 years old, Hughes will be tasked with being the leader for the Canucks, both on and off the ice. As Vancouver continues to build and restructure their team into a playoff contender, it will be much of Hughes’s responsibility to lead this team into their next era.
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