Quinn Hughes | #43 | LD

[Jess]

9 minutes ago, Smashian Kassian said:

Leaked video of the EA NHL 25 trailer

 

Looks like Quinn & his brothers are going to be on the cover

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

I imagine it will be officially released soon as the game usually comes out in September IIRC

 

Goddammit. Maybe they can break the curse together?

[Smashian Kassian]

56 minutes ago, Jess said:

 

Goddammit. Maybe they can break the curse together?

 

The curse? 

[Jess]

7 minutes ago, Smashian Kassian said:

 

The curse? 

 

Pretty sure there's a running joke that players on the cover of EA games are cursed in the years following their placement.

[Smashian Kassian]

11 minutes ago, Jess said:

 

Pretty sure there's a running joke that players on the cover of EA games are cursed in the years following their placement.

 

Hmmm. Didnt know that was a thing 

 

Took a quick look, the 2 that standout positively are Kane winning the cup after being on NHL 10 and Pronger winning the Hart trophy after being on NHL 2000.

 

But yeah.. not a great track record. Hopefully we buck the trend

[The Arrogant Worms]

 

[DeNiro]

14 hours ago, The Arrogant Worms said:

 

Did they do this with the Staal brothers at one point? Very cool to have them together though.

 

Notice how Quinn chose the black skate jersey? Come on Aqua! The fans want it, the players want it. Get it done!

[Rip The Mesh]

Nothin wrong with a little extra scratch, mm?

Edited August 22 by Rip The Mesh

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Edited September 1 by Rip The Mesh

[Pure961089]

Flashback to last year.  Quinn Hughes' 5 point night.  The kicker was the 5th point was with Zedina (picked 6th OA in the 2018 draft) on his knees after getting bodied to the ice. 

 

 

[Rip The Mesh]

Two things spring to mind when you see Quinn Hughes on the cover of EA Sports’ NHL 25.

 

First of all, there’s the fact he is wearing the Vancouver Canucks’ black-skate third jersey, which the team brought back into rotation a year and a half ago. The look was an immediate hit with fans and has proven popular with the players as well.

It’s also a big hit with the Canucks’ marketing team. It hasn’t been the franchise’s full-time look in 27 years, but the staying power of the brand is clear. And even though it doesn’t match the blue and green of the current — and classic — primary look, it’s clear that it has a powerful cachet.

It’s not going anywhere, that much is clear. Don’t be surprised if it’s worn even a little more for home games than it was last year.

The second, and probably more notable, thing that comes to mind is how Hughes landing on the cover of NHL 25 is yet another example of how the Canucks’ captain is consistently put forward in national NHL marketing campaigns, quite possibly more than any other player in Canucks history.

 

Hughes is the sixth Canuck to show up on a cover of the legendary hockey game series, following Kirk McLean (NHL 95), Markus Naslund (NHL 2000 and the European cover of NHL 05), Daniel (NHL 11’s Swedish edition) and Henrik (ditto for the ’11 game and also for the Vancouver regional cover in 2013), and most recently Elias Pettersson (NHL 20’s Swedish cover).

All those players had some stature, as did Pavel Bure and Trevor Linden before them, but it can be argued that the Canucks have never had a marketable star like Hughes before.

 

Earlier this year, for instance, Hughes was confirmed as a featured player in Amazon’s upcoming behind-the-scenes NHL series. And then, of course, he won the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenceman.

 

Such a national profile has been a rare thing for the Canucks’ stars. Yes, the Sedins and Roberto Luongo were well-known, but rarely there in the mix of national promotional campaigns. Same for Naslund, whose star did burn brightly for a year or two, but still just a short window.

ESPN commentator Ray Ferraro thinks the only comparable to Hughes as a national marketing presence was Bure. The Russian Rocket was a league-wide superstar, but he played in an era when the sport and its players, for better or worse, were not as brand-conscious as today.

“Times are different, but it could’ve been Bure. He had a wit to him that would’ve married well with his flashiness,” Ferraro told Postmedia on Thursday.

“I think Quinn is awesome. He’s smart, he gets what he has to provide from a media standpoint, and I think he’s just going to get more and more comfortable doing it. He’s sneaky funny — a star in every way.”

 

Sports marketing expert Tom Mayenknecht concurs with the Bure comparison.

“His captaincy is an important building block for Quinn given the long-range responsibilities he carries as the team’s primary spokesperson. Talent and productivity are key marketing assets, but so is leadership,” said Mayenknecht, a principal of Emblematic Brand Builders. “What makes Quinn somewhat of a unicorn among all-time most marketable Canucks is that he is a high-profile American from a high-profile American hockey family playing in a Canadian market that happens to be the second biggest English language market in the country.

“That American-Canadian storytelling extends his reach and relevance significantly. He’s not unlike Auston Matthews in that regard,” he added.

 

At the very least, Hughes is on par with the Canucks’ most marketable players of the past — and given his presence, his age and all the other factors listed above, if he hasn’t already become the most marketable player in team history, he certainly will be that guy in the near future.

“He’s already right up there with Bure, Luongo, the Sedins and Linden. And his upside is clearly such that he could very well lock in that all-time most marketable status with another year or two of Quinn being Quinn,” Mayenknecht concluded.

{pjohnston@postmedia.com}

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Edited August 27 by Rip The Mesh

[Pure961089]

The NHL still thinks of Hughes as a 3b Defenceman even after winning the Norris.  Or is this just engagement farming.  I can't take this X site seriously if this is what they really think.

 

Ahh, Ive been tricked. It's a 2023 ranking.  Still, even last year he wasn't 10th

.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 28 by Pure961089

[Pure961089]

Petey can now point to Hughes the next time Tocch brings up video games

 

 

[Rip The Mesh]

By Jeff Paterson
Considering only one National Hockey League defenceman has crested 100 points in the past 30 years, the notion of Quinn Hughes reaching triple digits this season seems like a long shot. Then again, it’s important to note that we’re talking about the reigning Norris Trophy winner who finished with 92 last season on a Vancouver Canucks team that sputtered offensively over the final couple of months of the season.

 

This is not a prediction that Hughes will reach the 100-point mark. But it’s also a recognition that the hockey world should have learned by now not to bet against the Canucks captain.
Hughes set the Canucks franchise record for points by a blueliner with 68 two seasons ago and has since rewritten the record book twice following up with 76 and 92 point totals.

 

 Many things will have to break favourably for Hughes to get to 100 this season, however it’s not out of the question. Here are five keys to Hughes joining Erik Karlsson whose 101 points in San Jose in 2022-23 set him apart from all other defencemen in the league over the past three decades.

 

Quinn Hughes has had a taste and that’s half the battle. Hughes was on a 100-point pace with 51 points through the team’s first 41 games last season. He knows it’s a legitimate possibility to get to 100 points. If he’d finished with 75 last season, it would seem like an unreasonable proposition to expect him to find 25 additional points. But he finished with 92. He wasn’t far off 100 and if the Canucks had three additional games on their schedule, Hughes likely would have reached the hundred point mark. Eight points is an average week for the soon to be 25-year-old. So he has the context to work with knowing what it will take to generate the added offence necessary to be a 100-point scorer.

 

While it’s true that Hughes had more power play points in the second half of the season (21) than he did in the first half (17), overall the team encountered power play struggles after the All Star break. From the start of February on, the Canucks power play operated at 18.8% and ranked 24th in the league over that stretch. With personnel and coaching changes in the off-season, the Canucks will surely aim to find more consistency with the man advantage and Hughes should play a massive role in that. While JT Miller is likely to continue to run the power play off the left half wall, the puck is still going to find its way back to Hughes at the top of the umbrella. As such, he’ll still get plenty of puck touches. If Hughes had picked up just one additional power play point per week after the All Star break, he would have easily gained the eight points needed to get to 100 for the season.

 

While this is an article focussing on Quinn Hughes, his point totals are certainly impacted by others on the team. A return to star form for Elias Pettersson would surely aid Hughes in his pursuit of 100 points. Whether at even strength or on the power play, if Pettersson can get back to being the player he has been throughout most of his career, everyone around him will reap the benefits. And a fully healthy Filip Hronek returning to the form he held in the first half of the season would also be a help to Hughes. Whether it’s moving the puck smartly to his partner to facilitate the breakout or shooting the puck the way he’s capable, Hronek has more to give than he showed down the stretch and through the playoffs. If he and Hughes are once again paired together, they have shown they have the ability to tilt the ice in the Canucks’ favour. It’s in those minutes that the Canucks have to pounce on opponents. If they do that, it stands to reason that Quinn Hughes will rack up the points...

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Edited September 7 by Rip The Mesh

[Rip The Mesh]

VANCOUVER — The elite training group that Quinn Hughes’ dad, Jim, runs each summer just outside Detroit has become so popular that last month there was a second, expanded camp to accommodate the additional skaters who wanted to tune up for the National Hockey League season.

The newbies at the U.S. National Team Development Program complex in Plymouth, Mich., included Nashville Predators captain Roman Josi, one of the top defencemen of his generation and the runner-up to Hughes last spring in balloting for the Norris Trophy. 

Josi, whose NHL team was beaten by Hughes’ Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last spring, has been a Norris finalist three times in five years but had one of his poorest seasons after winning the award as hockey’s top defenceman in 2020.

Josi’s inclusion at the camp meant fewer puck touches but more knowledge for Hughes.

 

“I did take away some things from him that I’m going to keep to myself,” Hughes told Sportsnet Friday during a phone call from Michigan. “But I will say one thing Josi told me. He won his first Norris and he said, 'I've got to win another one.' And then he didn’t have a great year. And the year after that he had a crazy year (and finished second to Cale Makar in 2022 Norris voting).

“I think his point was, you've just got to continue to be yourself. You don't have to push the envelope too, too hard. And I completely agree with that. Less is more sometimes. You've got to listen to your body, listen to your mind. I took nine weeks off because I do think less is more. But when I train, I do everything with a purpose. I'm very purposeful.

 

“Winning the Norris, it obviously does change your perspective on yourself a little bit. After it sinks in, it's like, wow, that’s pretty cool. But right now, it's like I didn't win the Norris because it's a new year. It's next year. It's always next year. I think that there's more I can get through. If I get 80 points or 85 or 95 or whatever it is, I do think my game will be better this year.”

Hughes also believes the 50-win, 109-point Canucks will be better. 

The 24-year-old captain said the Canucks won’t repeat the mistakes made when the organization collapsed in 2021 after what appeared to be a breakthrough playoff performance in the Edmonton bubble. 

In a wide-ranging interview, Hughes acknowledged the importance of the Canuck power play connecting the way coach Rick Tocchet wants, said he thinks he can become a 20-goal scorer and didn’t downplay the idea of reaching 100 points — a threshold only one NHL defenceman (Erik Karlsson) has reached in the last three decades.

In his Norris Trophy season, Hughes had 17 goals and 92 points while playing all 82 games, finished plus-38 and had a 57 per cent share of shot attempts and 63 per cent of five-on-five goals.

 

But. . .

“I felt like I missed a lot of scoring opportunities last year,” he said. “And even though my goal-scoring spiked, I think it can spike again. This whole summer, I worked on goal scoring — goal scoring from the dot, goal scoring from the top of the circles. So I think I can score more. I think that I can score 20 goals. As far as the other thing (100 points), I'm not sure. For me, I'm going to try to be aggressive every single night and push the pace, push my game, and then wherever that takes me, it takes me.”

 

In five years in the NHL, Hughes’ game has taken him from one-dimensional wonderkid — an incredibly agile skater who could pass the puck — to a well-rounded superstar who controls and impacts the game more than all but a half-dozen players on the planet.

Hughes couldn’t defend — until he proved he could. He couldn’t finish, then scored 17 times last season. Yeah, but he was no Makar or Josi or Adam Fox, and then he won the Norris. Really, all Quinn Hughes has to do now is win.

“I think we'll be better,” Hughes said of the 2024-25 Canucks. “We added a lot of depth up front. We added some guys like Jake DeBrusk that can really play and maybe contribute on the power play. I was pretty vocal with Patrik (Allvin, the Canuck general manager) about the (Kiefer) Sherwood add. Just playing him in the playoffs against Nashville and seeing his competitiveness and what he brings, you need guys like that on a championship team.

“I think that was a tremendous add, and then (Danton) Heinen and (Derek) Forbort and the other guys. Daniel Sprong can really score. I think that we added depth, we added goal scoring. I think we probably learned a lot last year, too, and we're just continuing to move up the mountain.”

 

 

 

 

Edited September 7 by Rip The Mesh

[-dlc-]

From the recent hockey camp where Stech was coaching a group of kids...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(kid pauses to think for a moment......)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alflives]

13 minutes ago, -dlc- said:

From the recent hockey camp where Stech was coaching a group of kids...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(kid pauses to think for a moment......)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard not to like Troy “from Richmond”. 

[-dlc-]

 

[Rip The Mesh]

Quinn doing his part to make gaming better, both on AND off the ice....

[-dlc-]

[Rip The Mesh]

Nice!

[Task]

Quinn is looking much older and stronger 

[Rip The Mesh]

 

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