Wild 2025-26 Report Cards: Quinn Hughes

The month of July continues to move along, as does the NHL offseason, and the trade rumors continue to fly as they usually do during this time of the year, and one of the Minnesota Wild’s most influential players is among them. Since Quinn Hughes has yet to sign an extension with the Wild, the rumors have started to fly all over X about whether he’ll end up with the Wild or not. 

All of the Wild’s defensemen have received their grades with the exception of Hughes. He’s the last one but definitely not the least, as he easily made the most impact of all the defensemen. Every Wild fan will likely remember hearing the news that their team had picked up Hughes in a trade; many didn’t believe it at first, but once the shock wore off, there was newfound hope for the team. In this article, we’ll look at how Hughes performed in the regular season and the postseason to come up with an overall grade. 

Hughes Shows Up 

The Wild made a blockbuster of a trade to acquire Quinn Hughes that sent Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren, and a first-round pick for the 2026 draft to the Vancouver Canucks. They gave up a lot but got a lot in return, and it’s safe to say that they haven’t regretted the decision. He played in 48 games for the Wild, and in that time, he scored five goals but had 48 assists for 53 points. With those assists, he set a new Wild record for most assists by a defenseman. 

Of course, everyone has seen what Hughes did offensively, but what about defensively? He wasn’t a very physical player with just six hits, but he had 55 blocked shots. Not as many as some of his teammates, but he does tend to focus more on the offensive side than his teammates as well. 

“Yeah, I think quite honestly it was all of those things. I think when you add a player like Quinn (Hughes), I think the guys in the room, yeah, they walk a little bit taller, they’ve got a little more swagger to them, because you just added a world-class player and you’re better. The pace at which we could play at because Quinn moves the puck up so quickly and so efficiently. The pace of our game got better,” said general manager Bill Guerin to the media in his end-of-season interview when asked about the trade for Hughes. 

Although he didn’t play all 82 games with the Wild, he played over half of them, and he did quite well. After looking at how he impacted the team both on the stat sheet and overall mood, he earned an A, just like his defensive partner, Brock Faber. It wasn’t lower because he did pretty much everything right, but it wasn’t higher because they could’ve always used more. 

Hughes Outshines in Postseason

While everyone was dazzled by Hughes’ performance in the regular season, he took it a step further in the postseason. He played in all 11 games of the Wild’s playoff run, and he tied for first with Kirill Kaprizov for most points in that time. He scored four goals and had 11 assists, the exact same as Kaprizov for 15 points.