Minnesota Gets Wildly Wild For Quinn

Move over Ryan Suter, there’s a new best defenseman in Wild history.  Bill Guerin pulled off one of the biggest trades in recent memory, acquiring Quinn Hughes from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren, and a first round pick.  Wow.  It’s time for a quick breakdown of what this means for both teams and their players, in the short and long term.  Let’s get to it!

Safe to say that Hughes wasn’t going to be eased into the Wild lineup.  Despite blowing out the Bruins on Sunday, Hughes played almost 27 minutes, scoring a goal on three shots.  It is hard to predict what will happen long term with Hughes without knowing how his contract situation plays out, but this is a big win for Hughes in the short term.  The Canucks were struggling mightily around him, and there simply isn’t a lot of top end talent on the team.  Now, Hughes gets to step into a power play unit with Kaprizov and Boldy.  He also gets a massive upgrade with his partner, getting to play with Faber.  They should instantly become one of the best pairings in the league while Faber allows Hughes to be relentless in attack.

Right now, Hughes is outside of the top 10 defensemen on the season.  I would have expected that to improve even staying in Vancouver, but now, I’m all the way in.  He would be my #2 defenseman for the rest of the season, although it’s neck and neck with Werenski.  Who knows what happens in the playoffs, especially because the three best teams in the league right now are all in the same division (nice format, Bettman), but for the regular season, I expect the Wild to maintain this elite level of play.  It’s a small bump to all of their forwards adding Hughes in, and a big help to Brock Faber.  If there was any doubt about whether Faber was a hold or not, that has been erased.  We’ve seen what Hronek has done playing with Hughes, and Faber should be a better version of that.

For the Canucks, they get a nice combination of young players.  Rossi is the easiest to project of the bunch as we have more information on him.  He’s a second line center right now, and that looks to be who he is.  There is no shame in that at all, but I’m not sure I see a first liner on a good team.  The good news for fantasy is that the Canucks aren’t good now, so he should be getting top minutes regularly.  Eventually, I do see him being a guy who is a hold in all formats.  Right now, I see more solid streamer with the chance for better.  His shot rate is quite poor for a forward, so he’s going to need some shooting luck to perform at a hold level.

Buium is the high risk, high reward defenseman on the team.  He could end up being a Quinn Hughes type, or Erik Karlsson who had similar underlying numbers as a rookie.  His underlyings also compare to Erik Brannstrom, which, well, the Canucks will be hoping doesn’t pan out.  Buium scored a goal and an assist in his debut with Vancouver, both on the power play.  M. Pettersson and Hronek should be able to eat the hard minutes to ease Buium in, but the problem is that he was getting very easy minutes for the Wild and doing poorly in them.  It’s a reminder that defensemen take time, and long term, I am bullish about Buium becoming a top pair guy, and probably a #1.  If I was rebuilding in a dynasty, I think he’s a great target.  In redrafts, I would still hold Buium because he’s locked into the top power play role now, but there could be some ugly stretches.

Ohgren is a nice fourth piece being added into the deal from a Canucks perspective.  The problem is that he’s been absolutely abysmal in the NHL so far.  With the Wild, he had zero points in 18 games.  Somehow even more damning, the Wild had only 30% expected goals with him on the ice.  I honestly can’t remember seeing numbers that bad.  Now, he does have draft pedigree as a former first round pick.  Last season in Iowa, he had 19 goals and 18 assists in 41 AHL games.  Usually, that ends up translating eventually.  My guess is that we see both things come true for Ohgren, in that he’s not a line driver, but if he plays with someone who does, he ends up scoring at a solid rate.  I’d guess he ends up as a third liner who is good enough down low that he gets power play time.  He’s not overly exciting, especially for us in fantasy, but he could carve out some decent value.  The good news is that he doesn’t have anything to prove in the AHL, and being on a bad team should guarantee him real NHL time for the rest of the season.

On a much lesser note, the Sabres have fired GM Kevyn Adams and promoted Jarmo.  Funny timing after they finally won three games in a row, but this move was long overdue.  It doesn’t have any fantasy impact right now, but Jarmo has been known to make some massive trades.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a blockbuster or two sooner than later.

Three Point Challenge: We will do Tuesday’s games per usual.  You can’t select MacKinnon, McDavid, Celebrini, Bedard, Necas, Kucherov, Rantanen, Eichel, Connor, or Draisaitl.  I’ll go with Nylander against the Blackhawks.

That’s all for now guys.  MarmosDad will be back Wednesday recapping the action from Tuesday night.  As always, feel free to ask any questions, leave any comments, or give any suggestions below.  Thanks for reading, take care!