The Minnesota Wild are taking a mighty big (and entertaining) swing

These are not your dad's Minnesota Wild

Friday ended up being a wild day on the NHL trade front with the Edmonton Oilers finally securing Tristan Jarry (for some reason?) and the Vancouver Canucks pulling off the highly anticipated Quinn Hughes trade far sooner than expected, sending him to the Minnesota Wild.

While the quality of players involved in the Hughes trade ended up being little higher than you normally see in these deals, it was still very close to the boilerplate formula.

You have the young NHL player that is good, but not great (Marco Rossi). The top prospect (Zeev Buium). Another lower-tier prospect (Liam Ohgren). The first-round pick (in 2026). All of the elements are there.

I wrote about all of those moves to some level at various places. You should read some of them if you are interested.

• Stuart Skinner, Brett Kulak and a second-round pick going to the Pittsburgh Penguins (PensBurgh)

• Winners and losers from the Tristan Jarry to Edmonton Oilers trade (Bleacher Report)

• Quinn Hughes trade highlights Canucks’ failures (YardBarker)

Here, though, I want to focus on the Wild angle in all of this because adding Hughes is a pretty clear sign of what they think of their team and their chances over the next year-and-a-half. That is also probably all the time they are going to have with him, because Hughes’ agent has already made it clear they would not promise any team interested in trading for him that a long-term contract extension could be worked out.

Canucks president Jim Rutherford also made it clear that Hughes expressed a desire to eventually play closer to his family. It may not have resulted in Hughes playing for the New Jersey Devils (where his brothers Jack and Luke play) right now, but the writing is very much on the wall.

If you are the Wild, you do not make a trade like this unless you believe you have a legitimate chance to win the Stanley Cup at some point in the next two years. Before the start of the season I had the Wild pegged as an under-the-radar contender in the Western Conference, and their young talent and newfound salary cap flexibility were a big part of that. They decided to use some of that young talent and that salary cap flexibility to acquire one of the best players in hockey.

That changes the math here. This is no longer an under-the-radar contender. It is just simply a contender.

What I find most fascinating about this from a Wild perspective is this might be one of the few times in the existence of the franchise that you could realistically and reasonably say that about them.

It is also one of the first times they are putting a team on the ice that is both good, and a team that you actually want to watch.

That is not meant to be a knock on past Wild teams. At least not as harsh as it sounds. They have had a lot of very good teams, and they have been a regular playoff team for the past decade-and-a-half. They have just never really had any serious playoff success. They have not played in a Western Conference Final since 2002-03, and have won just two playoff series (total) since then. Each of their past eight playoff appearances have resulted in a first-round exit.

Their best teams over that stretch have also had almost no star-power.

The latter point is certainly changing with this team.

That also might finally lead to some real playoff success.

Let’s talk about it.