Unfazed Hughes burns former team as Wild hand Canucks another loss

VANCOUVER — Quinn Hughes had listened to about 33 minutes of near-constant boos and jeers. 

He heard an energized crowd at Rogers Arena break out into various chants: Quinn, you suck; He’s not signing; Quit-ter. 

He watched as the jumbotron highlighted several disgruntled fans in retrofitted Hughes jerseys, letting the former captain know exactly where he stands with the Vancouver Canucks faithful after his departure last December. 

By the 34th minute of that, Hughes decided, presumably, that he had enough. 

Unfazed by the hostility around him, the Minnesota Wild defenceman calmly corralled a rebound in front of goaltender Leevi Merilainen, potting potentially the easiest and most memorable goal of his career — and his 500th career point — and dealing the death blow to the Canucks.

Hughes got the Brady Tkachuk treatment. Unlike Tkachuk, it was Hughes who got the last laugh against his former team. 

“I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I just wanted to get a win,” Hughes said post-game about scoring his milestone goal where it all got started. “I think just seeing those fans and being able to play here again is just pretty cool for me.” 

It helps, of course, that his team got the win and Hughes finished with the game-winning goal, an assist and first-star honours — no wonder it was easy to let the boos roll off his back. 

There was some acclaim scattered amongst the antagonists. His tribute during the first TV timeout was met with a mixed bag of reactions: some leers, some cheers and a fair few standing ovations. 

But outside of the minute-long homage, favour for the 27-year-old was few and far between.

“Very passionate fanbase,” Hughes said. “I was here for six and a half years, tried my best, and to see, you know, (I) got some cheers there. That was cool for me.

“I tried to be very present in the moment. … I wanted to win this game and wanted to play well. So that’s what I was thinking about.” 

Hughes looked unfazed, even as fans diligently booed each time he touched the puck.

“He handled it well. He played great,” said Wild goalie Calvin Pickard, who picked up his first win of the season with 32 saves on 34 shots. “I can’t imagine it’s easy in a moment like that for him. But he thrives. He’s great every night. He’s so fun to watch. I’m just so lucky to be on his side.” 

Under any other circumstance, Hughes would probably be remembered as one of the greatest players the Canucks had ever seen. Throughout his tenure, he rewrote almost every franchise record, won his first Norris Trophy and developed into a game-changing defenceman amongst the upper echelon in the league. 

And 10 months is certainly long enough to build up some scar tissue with a fanbase that is, by Hughes’ own admission, incredibly passionate. 

But as the Canucks stumble through the early days of a tear-it-all-down rebuild while Hughes embarks on a very real opportunity to win a Stanley Cup with the Wild, the wounds are clearly still fresh. 

“We all knew it was coming,” Canucks forward Brock Boeser told reporters. “(The fans) definitely had energy tonight.” 

The Canucks did too, at least for the first 20 minutes. 

Vancouver came out of the gates swinging in the opening frame and clearly fed on the zip of a crowd that has had little to cheer for this season. The Canucks were making plays, challenging Pickard and forcing turnovers, looking vastly different from the team that limped to a 5-2 loss against Detroit on Thursday. Even when Maxim Shabanov broke the ice in the 18th minute off a back-door pass, the game still felt firmly in reach. 

But the Canucks unravelled in the second and spent far too much time on the penalty kill. Goals from Hughes and Bobby Brink made it 3-0 before Kirill Kaprizov took a stretch pass from Hughes, froze nearly every Canuck skater on the ice, and scored a goal so filthy that Merilainen will be seeing it in his nightmares for weeks to come. 

“We keep talking about it, like, we do it for a period. Second period, we stop doing it. I don’t know why,” Boeser said. “You can kind of see the ice tilt in their favour and they get the momentum. We need to find a way to respond.”

The Canucks are now losers of 10 straight. The season is still in its infancy, and yet, Vancouver appears to be pulling way ahead in the race to the bottom. 

No other team has lost as many games as the Canucks — only the Chicago Blackhawks come remotely close with their eight beatings. 

“We’re searching for answers. It’s concerning,” defeated Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra said to reporters. “We have a good period. We have an understanding as to why we have a good period. And then as soon as we come off of the things we discuss — being physical, being aggressive, winning puck battles — and we allow a transition team to come to life, they did what we expected them to do.”

To an extent, Hughes also did what we expected him to do, and what he did through 459 games as a Canuck: He took control of the game and delivered his team the win. At the expense of his former team and in spite of the boos.

As the Wild head down to Utah in the hopes of consolidating their spot atop the Central Division, Vancouver will continue to navigate its reality in the basement of the NHL, in the hopes that one day another elite, franchise-altering player will find himself in Canucks colours.

Because it’s not Hughes anymore, which he reminded Vancouver of on Sunday night.