It's tough for Vancouver Canucks fans to take a joke right now.
Their team has made the playoffs just twice in the last decade, with the latest season after things had looked so promising the year before. With one fan favourite and another , it's understandable that Canucks fans might not take too kindly to the possibility of the team's franchise player also heading out of town.
So, when Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford , Jack and Luke Hughes, to set up a punch line about acquiring the two younger Hughes brothers from the New Jersey Devils, the joke didn't quite land.
On the , Rutherford emphasized that he was just joking around.
"Some of those comments were in jest, of course," said Rutherford. "I mean, I wasn't totally serious."
Obviously, Rutherford quipping that he wanted to acquire Jack and Luke Hughes was a joke. If it hadn't been a joke, he could have been in some hot water, as the NHL has talked about clamping down on tampering in recent months, with the threat of hefty fines meant to keep teams and executives in line.
But it turns out that his comments about Hughes wanting to play with his brothers were not even based on anything he's heard from Hughes.
"No, that's just been out there," said Rutherford. "I think people assume that."
Yes, plenty of people assume that Quinn would like to play with Jack and Luke — he's even talked generally about the idea — but fan assumptions are one thing; the president of hockey operations seemingly confirming those assumptions as fact is quite another. Those are the types of comments that create stories where none needed to exist.
Speaking of, Rutherford also brought the possibility of trading Hughes to the forefront of the conversation.
"As for Quinn, I don't have a deadline," said Rutherford. "We do control him for two more years. I think a better way of saying that is we control him for a year-and-two-thirds, because if we get to that trade deadline two years from now and it looks like he doesn't want to stay, then we would have to do something at that point. But we're hoping that he's here to stay. He's the leader of the team and the face of the franchise."
To be fair, Rutherford isn't talking out of school, by any means. Everyone understands that Hughes has two years left on his contract, giving the Canucks little time to convince their star defenceman that they can build a Stanley Cup contender around him. It's still unusual to hear an executive talk about a player in this way.
Furthermore, if the Canucks get to the point where Hughes doesn't have a contract extension by the 2027 trade deadline, something has already gone horribly wrong.
The Canucks will be able to sign Hughes to an extension starting July 1, 2026. The hope is that the Canucks would have a strong 2025-26 season, with positive signs for the future, giving Hughes every reason to want to stay in Vancouver long-term, potentially the rest of his career. If that's not the case, and it looks like Hughes might not stay, waiting until the trade deadline to move him would be potentially disastrous.
That would leave the Canucks in a situation of either trading Hughes as a rental, and thereby getting a limited return, or letting him walk for nothing in free agency. Neither is a good option.
Frankly, if Quinn Hughes goes into the 2026-27 season without a contract extension, the Canucks are in trouble. The fact that Rutherford is thinking in those terms is a cause for concern, but it's also not surprising. They didn't show much long-term thinking with Brock Boeser, and now is likely to walk in free agency for nothing. Similarly, they didn't get Rick Tocchet signed to a contract extension after he won the Jack Adams, and now he's gone too.
"Our focus is not about what's going to happen a year or two down the road with anybody," said Rutherford. "Our focus is preparing for each season, and I think that's where [Hughes's] focus should be, and the team's."
Suddenly, the words of former Canucks general manager Jim Benning spring to mind: "We live day-to-day."
On the plus side, the Canucks could benefit from that short-term thinking right now. The Canucks have one last chance to build a playoff team around Hughes. If it doesn't work, they're going to have to blow up the team anyway.
But if the team does have move into rebuild mode, they can't wait until the 2027 trade deadline — it will have to start a lot sooner than that.
