Wild GM Bill Guerin admits he has no idea what is going to happen with Quinn Hughes

There are a lot of things going right for the Minnesota Wild to open the 2026-27 season.

Following Tuesday's 3-1 win over the Utah Mammoth, they are 9-3-2 through their first 14 games of the season and have one of the NHL's best records.

Winger Kirill Kaprizov has scored 14 goals in 14 games and continues to play like one of the league's top superstars.

They also have an excellent goalie in Jesper Wallstedt who continues to emerge as a top starter. 

But even with all that success, there is one subplot to this season that is no doubt creating some anxiety for the team and its fans. It is the future of superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes. 

Hughes, acquired halfway through the 2025-26 season from the Vancouver Canucks, is in the final year of his contract and is set to become an unrestricted free agent after this season. Speculation has been building for years now on his next potential move, and that speculation does not involve his current team. 

Wild general manager Bill Guerin appeared on Minnesota radio (WCCO) on Wednesday and discussed Hughes' future, and it probably didn't do much to make anybody optimistic about his chances of re-signing with the team.

Wild general manager Bill Guerin has no idea what is going to happen with Quinn Hughes

The speculation regarding Hughes has centered around the New Jersey Devils for a couple of years now given his apparent desire to play alongside his two brothers, forward Jack Hughes and defenseman Luke Hughes. Now that the Devils are looking like an emerging contender following the Connor Hellebuyck trade, there would seemingly be even more incentive for him to join the Devils.

Quinn Hughes' apparent desire to join his brothers is something that Jim Rutherford, the former Canucks president of hockey operations, discussed prior to his trade and made it very clear that was something the Norris Trophy-winning defenseman wanted to do.

Now that we are already a month into the 2026-27 season and Hughes does not have a new contract in Minnesota, the questions for Guerin are starting to mount.

Not only on the team's chances of re-signing Hughes, but if the team would trade him before the deadline to avoid the risk of losing him for nothing.

Guerin discussed all of that on Wednesday.

Guerin said his main focus is on just letting Hughes play hockey, and that having him on the team makes the Wild a better hockey club. He also said there's not much he can do at this point, and that he can't just say "please, please, please" to get Hughes to sign.

When asked about whether or not there is a deadline for when he would have to decide on whether or not to move him, Guerin admitted he really doesn't have any idea what is going to happen or what he will do. 

“I haven't really decided, at some point in time I'll have to try to figure things out and see what’s best for the team. I know one thing is for sure, and that is having Quinn on our team is what’s best for the team. And, I don't know. I’ll be completely honest with you, I don’t know. I don't know what’s going to happen. I don't know what I’m going to do. There’s no date. What we're doing right now is focusing on our team and trying to win hockey games. That’s really it. I think some people want to make this more complicated than it really is, and it’s not that complicated."

None of that is an ideal response if you are Wild fan.

Guerin sounded completely defeated and exhausted with the whole subject, and might even be resigned to the fact that he does, in fact, have to make a big decision.

Minnesota paid a steep price to get Hughes, sending forward Marco Rossi, defenseman Zeev Buium and forward Liam Ohgren, along with a 2026 first-round pick, to the Canucks to acquire Hughes. While Hughes is clearly the best player in that group, the Wild were probably at least hopeful that Hughes might re-sign. If he doesn't, that was going to be, at most, two kicks at the Stanley Cup with him on the roster. 

Now it might not even be that if Guerin decides a trade is for the best. 

Hughes does make the Wild a legitimate Stanley Cup contender this season, but the team still has a few notable holes that might limit its ceiling (especially at center). 

There is some recent precedent for a team trading a star-level player when it is a contender (the Colorado Avalanche traded Mikko Rantanen in 2025 when he was set to leave as an unrestricted free agent) but it is not very common. 

The Wild might not trade him. They might try to take an all-or-nothing run at the Cup with him and make some additions around him. But it starting to look and sound like his path to New Jersey, and a Devils team that looks like a sudden contender, is wide open. Everybody seems to know it.