SAINT PAUL – Three first-round picks and a former ninth overall selection were the price Minnesota paid to make Quinn Hughes a Wild. That is what it cost to separate the best defenseman in the NHL from a Vancouver franchise that had run out of reasons to keep him.
Nine weeks into the extension talks that were supposed to turn a rental into a cornerstone, the Wild are paying something else: they are waiting for an answer that has not arrived.
Hughes, 26, is in the final year of a six-year contract worth $7.85 million per season. He became eligible to sign an extension on July 1. Elliotte Friedman, who covers the NHL for Sportsnet, said in his most recent update that he has been “surprised a little bit about how long this has taken,” adding that he does not think there have been “a lot of talks recently between Hughes and the Wild” and he will “be concerned if it’s not done at the start of the season,” according to Yahoo Sports.
The season opens October 1 in Nashville. There are 29 days.
The terms Bill Guerin has used in public carry a different temperature. Minnesota’s general manager has described his relationship with Hughes and agent Pat Brisson as good. He told the Chad Hartman Show last week that communication has been productive and he has spoken with Hughes more than any other player this offseason. Then he said something that did not fit alongside the rest: he does not know what Hughes wants.
A GM who does not know what his target wants is not a GM who is close to a deal.
The two sides are not reported to be far apart on money. Cale Makar’s extension with Colorado, signed August 28 at $20.4 million per season over eight years, created the clearest possible market anchor for this negotiation. Brisson negotiated that deal as well. The same person who secured the richest contract in NHL history is now across the table from the Wild, and he has the most current data point in the league to work from. A three-year deal at $18 million annually, as Friedman has predicted, would make Hughes the highest-paid player in Wild franchise history.
That number is not the sticking point. Term is.
Minnesota reportedly wants five to eight years, a commitment long enough to justify the assets surrendered and to capture Hughes’s physical prime years on one contract. Hughes, according to multiple reports, has expressed interest in a deal closer to three years, which would make him an unrestricted free agent at 29, aligning roughly with the expiration of his brother Jack’s contract with the New Jersey Devils.
The brothers angle is not a minor consideration. Jack and Luke Hughes play in New Jersey. The Devils are projected to carry more than $30 million in cap space for 2027-28. A three-year extension for Quinn traces the shortest path to a summer in 2029 where all three Hughes brothers could be on the market simultaneously and the Devils have the financial room to pursue them, according to Bleacher Report.
Whether Quinn is actually thinking about New Jersey, nobody has confirmed publicly. What is confirmed is that Guerin does not know what his player wants, and Friedman says the talks have gone quiet.
The Wild’s owner has declined to leave ambiguity about the outcome. “We are going to re-sign him,” he said. “The question will be for how long. We would like to go as long as we could.” That kind of public commitment from an ownership level is unusual. It reads as confidence. It could also read as an organization setting the terms of the story it will have to tell if the answer eventually comes as three years rather than eight.
The extension standstill in Minnesota runs alongside other unresolved defenseman situations as training camp approaches September 16. The Detroit Red Wings’ Simon Edvinsson contract standstill has a structural cause: no permanent general manager authorized to close a deal. Minnesota’s version is different. Guerin is at the table. The talks have been ongoing. The relationship, by his own account, is strong. And he still does not know what the player wants.
That gap between process and progress is what makes Friedman’s assessment worth reading carefully. He covered the full summer without flagging alarm. When he says he is surprised and will be concerned if October arrives without a deal, he is not reaching for drama. He is describing the distance between where this negotiation should be and where it is.
Training camp opens in 14 days. The season opens in 29. Between now and then, one of the most expensive one-year rentals in franchise history needs to become something longer.
So far, it has not.
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