Canucks’ Quinn Hughes named NHLPA player of the week

The Canuck Captain helped lead his team to three straight victories: a 2-1 win over the Washington Capitals on Saturday, they beat the St. Louis Blues on Monday 5-2 and topped it off with a 3-1 victory over the Nashville Predators on Wednesday. The NHLPA awards the player of the week on Fridays, measuring this past week from Friday, January 24 – Thursday, January 30.

During that three-game win streak, Hughes recorded multi-point games in all three outings. The American defenceman made some fantastic plays, adding to the number of highlight reel plays he’s already made this season.

Hughes scored two goals against the Capitals. His first was this individual effort to evade the Capitals forward, slip through the neutral zone and send a ridiculous back-hand shot far-post behind Charlie Lindgren to put the team up 1-0:

His second goal of this game might have been even more impressive as he walked the blueline and ripped a seeing-eye shot through a crowd perfectly into the top corner where the crossbar meets the post:

He rolled that solid performance into St. Louis, where he absolutely threaded the needle, connecting on a pass to Conor Garland under Blues defenceman Ryan Suter on this 2-on-1 in the first period to open the scoring:

Hughes then makes a long stretch pass to spring JT Miller on a power play breakaway, who makes no mistake to extend the Canucks lead and chase Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington:

We move to Nashville, where Hughes continued his dominance. Much like in St. Louis, Hughes leads the Canucks connect early on a first-period on-the-rush goal. He and Elias Pettersson pass back and forth four times before Hughes finds the streaming Nils Höglander, who makes a move to get around the Predators defender and beats Juuse Saros to give the Canucks a 1-0 lead.

This was the only point of Hughes’ week that was not a primary point. He finds Tyler Myers down on the left-side goal line and lets him do the rest of the work. Myers does his best Hughes impression as he sends a fantastic cross-ice pass to the tape of Linus Karlsson, who pots his first career NHL goal right in front of the net.

It was a fantastic week for the Canuck captain, finishing the week with two goals and four assists for six points with a plus-4 rating, seven shots on goal, playing over 24 minutes of ice time in each game.

Hughes will look to continue his strong play when the Canucks take on the Dallas Stars on Friday evening.