On the day he faced his former team for the first time since being traded to the Minnesota Wild in December, Quinn Hughes was able to reflect on his career as a Vancouver Canuck—and, more importantly, on where it all unraveled.
The Canucks went from a team with a strong core that pushed Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers to Game 7 of the second round in 2023–24, to a full-blown rebuild in 2025–26, with much of that core now gone. There are plenty of reasons for that, but Hughes believes the trade sending J.T. Miller to New York was the real turning point—in a bad way.
He spoke about it in an interview with Thomas Drance of The Athletic.
“I obviously have my thoughts on it, but I don’t want to point fingers at anyone. I would say that the trade last year with J.T. Miller, I mean, he was a top-five player for us the year prior. He had (103) points, PK, power play, taking defensive-zone draws. He had (103) points, and it wasn’t accomplished by cheating all the time; he had (103) points playing the right way. There were nights I’d watch him and just think, ‘This guy is unbelievable.
To lose that guy the very next year … that was probably a fracture of everything. And yet, on some level, it felt like you could see it coming for years, I would say,”
The now 33-year-old Miller was, of course, dealt to the Rangers for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and a 2025 first-round pick last January—a trade that hasn’t exactly worked out for either side.
Not only was Miller gone, but Elias Pettersson—whom the team chose to keep amid their rift—still couldn’t find his game, which , and understandably so.
It’s all a thing of the past now, but it’s wild to think back to just a few years ago, when the hockey world thought Vancouver would be a force to be reckoned with for years to come, led by Hughes, Miller, and Pettersson. Instead, here we are, with the former two now in Minnesota and New York, and the latter likely to be on the move at some point himself.
Next: Oilers Could Already Look to Move Tristan Jarry This Summer?
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