DENVER — Minnesota Wild president of hockey operations Bill Guerin was at home making meatballs the night of Dec. 12 when he got the call from Jim Rutherford, his Vancouver Canucks counterpart.
The Canucks were in if the Wild were still in.
Less than a week earlier, Guerin had called Rutherford while pacing the Delta concourse at LaGuardia Airport, awaiting a flight home after a weeklong trip scouting potential U.S. Olympians. Guerin made it clear he wasn’t messing around, offering his old boss in Pittsburgh a deal that would send Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren and a 2026 first-round pick to Vancouver in exchange for superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes.
After the Canucks agreed to the deal that evening of Dec. 12, Guerin called Rossi, Buium and Öhgren one by one to let them know they had been traded.
“Me and my girlfriend were going to dinner, and I saw Billy call,” Öhgren told The Athletic. “We had a lot of injuries, and we had a game the next day, so I knew he wasn’t calling to tell me I was getting sent down or something like that. So my heart started pumping really fast.”
“But he didn’t tell us who we were traded for,” Rossi added.
“We knew it had to be for a big-time player because they gave up a lot,” Öhgren said.
Rossi, Öhgren and Buium figured it had to be for Hughes or Elias Pettersson.
As shocked as Buium was to be moved, the young defenseman said once he found out who was on the other end of the deal, “You can’t be disappointed when you get traded for Quinn Hughes.”
On Thursday night at Grand Casino Arena, the Wild and Canucks face off for the first time since that mid-December blockbuster.
Hughes is scheduled to discuss playing against the Canucks, the team he captained but wasn’t willing to commit to long-term, for the first time Thursday morning. The Athletic sat down with Rossi, Buium and Öhgren in Denver on Tuesday afternoon — a day before Vancouver was to play the Avalanche.
Hughes has talked glowingly about the Wild, who will try to extend his contract this offseason — a summer before he can become a free agent. He has elevated the Wild into a true contender, though they have been in a .500 funk since the Olympics.
The Wild are 24-12-7 since the trade with the ninth-most points in the NHL (55). Hughes has racked up points, accolades and team records.
You can see his impact in his rank among all NHL defensemen since Dec. 14 (through Tuesday):
CategoryStatRank
Assists
45
1
Points
49
2
Power-play points
21
2
ATOI
28:01
1
The Canucks, on the other hand, are a league-worst 11-27-5 (27 points) with the second-fewest goals (105) in that span. They endured an 11-game winless streak and have six wins in 36 games since Dec. 30 after snapping a six-game losing streak Tuesday in Colorado behind Brock Boeser’s hat trick and four points.
The mounting losses, though, have been hard on the three former Wild players.
“We’re all competitors, right?” said Rossi, 24. “But we all know the situation we’re in right now. We know we have to get better and we have to learn, especially with so many young players. It’s important to stay together and just learn as much as we can and know the future is going to be better if we do that. We have a lot of good young players and prospects.”
Added Buium: “When I first got here, there was the excitement of opportunity and obviously probably play a little bit more and try and help win and stuff like that. And when you lose and lose, it just feels like, ‘Is it ever going to end?’ It felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel during the 11-game losing streak. I think mentally I was struggling a little bit, for sure. And I think for me, it was trying to go back on past experiences. I played for my (U.S. development program) Under-17 team. We were terrible. We won five games all year. Trying to go back to that experience and remembering how we got out of that and what I did during that next year, when we went on and won Under-18 worlds.
“I think for our team, we might not win every game, but as long as our effort is there, our compete is there, we give ourselves a chance to win every night. We’re not going to accept losing, but you can go home and hang your hat on something. And I think for me individually, I’m finding that confidence of late.”
Going from the contending Wild to the rebuilding Canucks hasn’t been easy on Zeev Buium, but he’s excited for the future and has no hard feelings. (Michael Russo / The Athletic)
Like Rossi and Öhgren, Buium said he was fully invested in being a Wild player forever.
At 20 years old, the first-round pick, NCAA champion at Denver and two-time World Juniors gold-medalist is regarded as a potential future star in the NHL. He became close to Wild players like Matt Boldy and Brock Faber and was mentored specifically by Zach Bogosian. In fact, the way Bogosian treated him in Minnesota is why he opted to wear No. 24 in Vancouver.
“He’s someone I can’t thank enough,” Buium said. “From Day 1, always bringing me into his house, always inviting me to everything, making sure I felt a part of it. The main thing is (he) just never really treated me like a rookie or I was so young. Just had the best advice and always knew what to say and when to say it.”
Many Wild players texted Buium, Rossi and Öhgren this week, hoping to have dinner Wednesday — not realizing the Canucks had a game in Colorado that night.
Despite the initial disappointment of being traded, Buium is grateful to the Wild for how they treated him and still finds himself rooting for them.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been that person to hold a grudge unless there’s bad blood in the water, which there isn’t,” Buium said a few minutes before taking an Uber to DU’s campus Tuesday to hang with former teammates — who are Frozen Four-bound again this year — and other friends. “Those guys, you get so close with them, and Billy treated me incredibly right from the very beginning.
“I mean, they were able to trade for Quinn Hughes. I get it. I know it was a short period of time, but I just loved everything about Minnesota. It was tough getting that call from Billy, but you have so much respect for him, and I just want to see those guys succeed. So it was tough, but I know what they’re trying to do over there. They’re trying to win a Stanley Cup, and I hope they get there.”
Buium said being so young, “you’re so delusional a little bit, and you just believe you’re going to be in that place forever. I wanted to, for sure, and I think everybody knew that I really embraced what it meant to be a Minnesota Wild player. I think they have such a great thing going there, a great culture. … But when a page closes, the next one opens.”
Rossi and Öhgren feel the same.
This is a new opportunity with an organization that believes wholeheartedly in them.
Rossi, to be blunt, didn’t feel that the last year in Minnesota. There were trade rumors for two consecutive years, and he was well aware they weren’t just rumors. His agents were honest with him that one reason it was so difficult to get a contract done with the Wild last summer was that he was likely being shopped.
So even after Rossi agreed to a three-year, $15 million contract in August, he knew he was very easily tradeable.
“I didn’t feel that energy (by them) when my contract was coming up, so even though I was pumped to re-sign, you don’t really know if they love you,” Rossi said. “So it was really hard to know what to believe and what not to, so when I got traded, you were sad, but on the other side, you were really happy knowing Vancouver really wanted you.”
Rossi scored 24 goals and 60 points last season, so he was blindsided when he was dropped to the fourth line in the middle of the first game of the playoffs.
“Of course it bothers you,” he said. “In that moment, you’re always thinking team first, but I thought I had a really good regular season. I mean, 60 points, and then just after one game, they’re making a decision like that. It just showed me they had, like, no respect for me. I told them, so that was their decision. But that’s in the past now.”
Rossi was traded to the Canucks at the tail end of a foot injury after playing 82 games in each of the prior two seasons. He admits that he probably came back too early because he wanted to debut. He played eight games, scoring only a goal and two points. He never felt 100 percent, then took a shot in the same spot and aggravated the injury. He didn’t play from Jan. 2 until after the Olympic break began on Feb. 25.
“It never healed,” Rossi said. “I mean, it’s very frustrating. Especially when I got traded, you want to play so bad, and you want to show the fans what they’ve got, and you just don’t want to miss a game. And maybe it was a little bit too soon.”
He has 15 points in the past 14 games and is starting to feel more like himself playing on a line with Brock Boeser and Drew O’Connor.
Marco Rossi and Liam Öhgren are looking forward to their first game back in Minnesota. (Michael Russo / The Athletic)
Öhgren, 22, has scored eight goals and 16 points in 43 games, with a couple of shootout goals. Lately, he has played on a line with Pettersson and Linus Karlsson.
“I’m looking forward to Thursday,” Öhgren said of his first game back. “It’ll be special. I have no hard feelings. I got drafted by them. They believed in me. They made my dream come true. I played my first games for them and scored my first goal for them. It’ll be fun to be back and see all the guys.”
Rossi agreed: “It’s gonna be a nice memory. I have great memories in Minnesota and can’t wait to play in front of the fans again.”
There’s an old tradition in the NHL where players put a dollar figure on the locker-room whiteboard when they play an old team. That amount goes into the kitty for a team party at the end of the year or even into the wallet of the teammate who scores the winning goal that night.
Asked how much he’ll put on the board, Rossi joked, “Depends how much (Öhgren and Buium) put up.”
All three players, as tough as the losing has been, are excited about their futures in Vancouver.
Rossi said it’s none of his business that the Wild still don’t have a prototypical No. 1 center after trading him, but that he hopes to be that in Vancouver. Öhgren hopes to develop into a middle-six winger.
“I think I’m the same player,” he said. “I think I just have more confidence, more comfortable. I know the league a little bit more now, and I mean, I’m still young, and I learn every game. Every minute I play makes me better.”
Buium just hopes he can turn into his own player in Vancouver and not be considered the “Next Quinn Hughes.”
“I want to be myself,” Buium said. “Quinn’s Quinn. And there’s tons of players in this league that are unbelievable, and I think I just want to be me and write my own story and be my own player. If that’s being a guy like Quinn, then let’s be a guy like Quinn, but I want to be the best version of myself.
“Most of all, I want to win. I think Minnesota’s going to win for a long time. I want to be a part of that in Vancouver.”
