Major development with Quinn Hughes that will rock the entire NHL

Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leiopold told fans yesterday that his team is re-signing superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes.

Hughes, of course, is a pending unrestricted free agent who can hit the open market in the 2027 offseason and is eligible to sign a contract extension with the Wild on July 1st.

“First of all, Quinn Hughes is an extraordinary player and an extraordinary person,” Leipold said when asked about Hughes' future with the team. “We had to give up a lot to get him in this past year. We are going to re-sign him. The question will be for how long. We would like to go as long as we could. He will probably want it to be a little shorter -- shorter being maybe three years. We hopefully will end up at five, I don’t know, and the reason I can openly talk about this is that I’m not doing the negotiating.”

Hughes himself has been non-committal on his plans for free agency, even dating back to his time with the Vancouver Canucks. There's a belief that he would like to walk himself to free agency so that he can explore the possibility of signing with his brothers Jack and Luke Hughes on the New Jersey Devils.

"I mean, I really like it here," Hughes said May 15, two days after the Wild were eliminated by the Colorado Avalanche with a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 5 of the Western Conference Second Round. "We'll see what Billy (Guerin) wants to do."

Yesterday's news from Leipold seems to indicate that there's been a shift in Hughes' thinking, however. Stay tuned because if he re-signs with the Wild this offseason it will have a huge impact on the upcoming free agent class.