Canucks move quickly to make most out of Hughes trade in deal with Wild

But for now, Hughes — who signed a six-year, $47.1 million contract ($7.85 million average annual value) with Vancouver on Oct. 3, 2021 — was fine with the fit in Minnesota. That allowed Rutherford to add a significant amount of young talent, with more to come, now with two first-round picks in the 2026 NHL Draft.

“I believe that we’ve been in a rebuild here for a little bit, and we’ve been able to acquire some good young players, but this move today gives us some really good young players,” Rutherford said. “It may not change our team in the next few months or even this season, but this doesn’t have to be a full-blown rebuild where it’s going to take five or seven years.

“We keep going the direction we’re going to go on. We’re going to get a really good player in June, and this thing can turn for the Canucks, certainly within the next couple of years.”

Rossi, 24, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 9 pick in the 2020 draft and is in his third full NHL season. He has 13 points (four goals, nine blockists) in 17 games. He’s in the first season of a three-year, $15 million contract ($5 million AAV) he signed with the Wild on Aug. 22, 2025.

“We tried to get Rossi for a long time now, because we knew we needed help at center,” Rutherford said. “The young defenseman [Buium] is a special, special player, and he’s got such a high ceiling going forward, and of course, with Ohgren, he’s another first-round pick that’s still developing and should become a regular player for the Canucks at some point in time.”

Ohgren, 21, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 19 pick in the 2022 draft and has yet to register a point in 18 games this season.

Buium, 20, was selected by Minnesota with the No. 12 pick in the 2024 draft and has 14 points (three goals, 11 blockists) in 31 games.

“We’re excited about the youth we got in return here,” Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin said. “We’re kind of retooling, rebuilding, and one thing we always try to do here is we try to bring in players that are 25 and younger and will continue to grow here. We have a lot of younger players in our lineup up here due to injuries that might have been forced a little bit early than we projected, but they’ve done really well.”