Do the Canucks trade Quinn Hughes this season?

The Vancouver Canucks have continued to struggle through the first prt of the 2025-26 season and their time with superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes could be winding down, as he continuously looked less interested on the ice. 

While trade rumors began swirling ahead of the season, the noise has only become louder, with his brothers Jack Hughes and Luke Hughes playing with the New Jersey Devils, a team that reportedly is interested in adding Quinn’s talents. 

On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton dove into Hughes’ situation and what could be coming. 

Hutton: If there is going to be a trade, there has to be something perfect with prospects that helps Vancouver. We’ve talked about this a lot, teams rush into these trades. You can give me six players, but if they’re not Quinn Hughes caliber, what does this trade matter? I think at some point when there’s smoke, there’s fire, and it seems like a disgruntled employee wants out of Vancouver.

Yaremchuk: You can sit there and say, ‘look at how much we got,’ But if it’s nothing of substance, it just doesn’t matter…I also believe they have talked the fact that Vancouver, we’re only in December, and they’re getting to the point where they’re actually legitimately talking about this way more than a couple of weeks ago.

I think a trade is possible this year. I think Vancouver is probably due towards a bit of a hard reset here next summer and I wonder if Jim Rutherford is putting up his hand and saying ‘Im going to be the guy to bite the bullet and trade Quinn Hughes and then it just sets us up for fire Patrik Allvin In the summer, bring in someone new, and at least they’re not burdened with it.

Hutton: If you’re the Canucks, I think you have to take a realistic look in the mirror at what you have, and is having Quinn Hughes now and just riding this out with this subpar team that’s been kind of pieced together, and that has lost that drive to really win worth it? 

Maybe give yourself a better chance of some reconstruction and a brighter future to build into than just having a great defenseman on a mediocre team? I think that is the honest assessment that Vancouver has to make at this point.

You can catch the rest of the breakdown and Monday’s episode here…