ST. PAUL, Minn. — Once again, Bill Guerin proved he’s not afraid to swing for the fences.
One year after the Minnesota Wild president of hockey operations and general manager sent a haul to the Columbus Blue Jackets for David Jiricek and two months after signing Kirill Kaprizov to the biggest contract in NHL history, Guerin fulfilled his promise to go big-game hunting Friday by trading for maybe the second-best defenseman in the NHL.
Yes, Guerin gave up a king’s ransom to do so — the equivalent of four first-round picks — but in Guerin’s mind, guys like Hughes don’t come around often, or maybe ever.
“Billy has giant (guts),” said former Wild winger and current NHL Network analyst Mike Rupp. “I love it. Billy knew there would be a price, and he paid it, just like he did with (Kaprizov).”
An All-Star. A soon-to-be Olympian. A Norris Trophy winner. And a star defenseman to tag with his superstar winger, both in their prime.
Kaprizov is 28. Hughes, who will debut Sunday against the Boston Bruins, is 26. And then there’s budding star Matt Boldy, 24; up-and-coming goalie Jesper Wallstedt, 23; and stalwart defenseman Brock Faber, 23.
Guerin is banking on this core starting the Wild’s ascent to true contender status — and that the situation will be alluring enough to convince Hughes to stick around long-term and help Minnesota become a destination for even more big fish.
“Great players want to play with great players,” Guerin said recently. “So when you have a guy like Kirill on the team, it’s definitely an attraction because you get to play with somebody special. When he decides to stay here, we keep that. It’s very much a different story if he decides to leave.”
For a Wild team that hasn’t won a playoff series in a decade and has never been, as Guerin even put it, a “serious contender,” this is the kind of aggressive move that could move them closer to the likes of the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference.
With the salary cap going up for every team, free agency isn’t going to be a game-changer, as the Wild found out the hard way by striking out in July in their first year of freedom following the dead cap hits of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise.
Aside from being a top-3 defenseman, Quinn Hughes hits some real areas of need for the Wild.
Minnesota ranks…
Zone Exit Success Rate – 11th
Zone Entry Success Rate – 27th
Rush Chances – 32nd
Turnover Rate – 18th
Hughes is a one-man breakout. He cuts through the neutral zone… pic.twitter.com/AIiIaGeeDf
— Mike Kelly (@MikeKellyNHL) December 13, 2025
“Kudos to (Guerin) — bold, get after it,” said former NHL GM Craig Button. “Twenty-four GMs are just wearing protective gear making sure they keep their cushy jobs. Bill is in it to win it. Hughes is a superstar. Vancouver made a very good deal, given the circumstances, and gets youth and skill to help them forward. I love (Zeev) Buium, but that’s the price to get Hughes.”
From the moment Guerin re-signed Kaprizov in September, just before training camp, he signaled that he wasn’t done adding. He finally had the combo of cap space, prospects and other young assets to make a play. A big part of negotiations with Kaprizov was the superstar wanting to know what the Wild would do to win.
“That’s the idea, it doesn’t stop here,” Guerin said after signing Kaprizov. “We want to win. We want to do the things that you have to do in order to win — somewhere down the line, to start to add pieces or to change where necessary. But we haven’t been able to be in the game because of our cap situation, but now that’s in the past, and we have good flexibility with our cap situation now.”
Let’s look at this from a big-picture perspective. For a season and a half — maybe, they hope, more — the Wild now have a top-two or -three player at his position in Hughes — a human breakout, a power-play star and a game-changer.
Since debuting in March 2019, Hughes leads all NHL defensemen with 371 assists and 190 power-play points and ranks second with 432 points.
“Those guys don’t come around very often,” Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman said.
Hughes is in the fifth year of a six-year deal that pays him $7.85 million in average annual value. He’s eligible for an extension on July 1.
There has been a lot of speculation that Hughes would like to join forces in New Jersey with his brothers, Jack and Luke, or play in his home state for the Detroit Red Wings if he becomes a free agent in July 2027.
There have been no assurances given to the Wild that Hughes will extend next summer, per league sources. But as somebody close to Hughes told The Athletic, it’s easier to convince a player to sign once he’s in the place.
Because he’s eligible for an extension before the new collective bargaining agreement kicks in Sept. 15, the Wild would also be the only team that can sign Hughes to an eight-year extension with a frontloaded structure, including unlimited signing bonuses, like the record contract they recently gave Kaprizov.
The idea was that the Kaprizov extension would put emphasis on what the Wild could do in the next two, three or four years, with the mix of young players on team-friendly contracts (i.e., Boldy on a $7 million average annual value, Wallstedt at $2.2 million and Danila Yurov on his entry-level) and veterans entering the later stages of their careers (i.e., Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin and Mats Zuccarello).
There was a certain amount of pressure on both Guerin and the Wild. The franchise hasn’t been out of the first round of the playoffs in 10 years, and this is the seventh year with Guerin running hockey operations. The built-in four years of patience he gained with owner Craig Leipold over the Parise and Suter buyouts is over. And in the first summer of cap flexibility — when Leipold predicted July 1 would be like “Christmas morning” — the Wild found a pretty lean free-agent class, with their biggest signing depth center Nico Sturm.
Especially with the salary cap going up, the only way for Guerin to make a game-changing move was to use his cap space, prospect pool and assets to land a big fish. And Hughes was the top available guy on the trade market. The Wild, despite an October swoon, have risen to among the top seven teams in the league by going 14-3-2 in their past 19 games, beating top teams like Dallas and Colorado in recent weeks.
The goaltending has been effective with the rotation of Filip Gustavsson and Wallstedt. There are two lines anchored by superstars in Kaprizov and Boldy. The blue line has been solid with Faber on top of his game and vets like Spurgeon and Brodin, though the Swedish left-shot defenseman got banged up against Dallas and is questionable through the weekend.
The Wild trading Marco Rossi was not a surprise — not if you’ve followed the team the past year and a half. The 2020 first-round pick went through a difficult negotiation over the summer as a restricted free agent, eventually signing a three-year, $15 million bridge deal before training camp. Rossi had been dangled in trades dating back to the summer of 2024, including a potential one with the Canucks at this past year’s draft.
Yurov’s emergence has provided insurance and depth for the Wild up the middle, as the 2022 first-rounder has played well with Kaprizov and Zuccarello (most recently, Vladimir Tarasenko filled in for the injured Zuccarello). With Yurov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Ryan Hartman and Sturm, the Wild have been in pretty good shape up the middle.
That doesn’t mean the Wild will stop looking for a true top-line center; that doesn’t change by trading Rossi. They always were going to because, fair or not, Guerin didn’t see him as a future No. 1 center.
Liam Ohgren, the 19th pick in 2022, has had a few call-ups at the NHL level, tallying three goals in 46 games. He was given every opportunity in training camp to grab a regular role, whether it was top six or lower, but was sent back down to AHL Iowa after picking up zero points in the first five games. He’s shown he can be an NHL player, and he has a great shot, but he’s yet to provide much production.
A big blow for the Wild, too, is Buium, who has star potential on the blue line. Minnesota hasn’t had anyone with his skating ability or skill on the blue line — well, until Hughes. And Hughes is the type of player Buium could become. However, Buium is still a rookie NHL defenseman, going through growing pains and trying to figure out what he can do at this level.
How Buium develops and how long Hughes stays in Minnesota (and the Wild’s playoff success) will go a long way in determining how this trade is graded years from now.
“I think (Hughes) is one of the most creative players in the game — a brilliant player with the puck that will make Minnesota’s attack much more dynamic and versatile,” former NHLer Ray Ferraro said. “He’s a one-man breakout machine. A really great, competitive kid as well.”
