Quinn Hughes Is Second on the Norris Board and No Longer in Vancouver
Hughes opens at +400 behind Cale Makar after being traded to Minnesota. The price barely moved despite his change of conference, team and role.
The Norris Trophy market opens with Cale Makar at +300 and Quinn Hughes at +400. The second of those two names is playing for a different team in a different conference than he was a year ago, and the number does not really reflect it.
The trade that reset two rosters
The Hockey News reported that Minnesota general manager Bill Guerin acquired Hughes from Vancouver, a move it described as trading for one of the best defencemen in the world. Guerin’s year also included building the gold-medal-winning United States team at the Olympics and taking the Jim Gregory award as the league’s top general manager.
What it did not include was a deep playoff run. The Wild beat Dallas in the first round and then lost to Colorado in what The Hockey News called a relatively meek second-round exit. Minnesota came in at 15th on the outlet’s off-season rankings, with the summer that followed the blockbuster described as relatively mediocre.
For Vancouver, the departure is the clearest single marker of where the rebuild stands. The Canucks were 32nd on ESPN’s June panel and are the longest price on the Cup board, quoted between +50000 and +100000.
Why the Norris price should have moved more than it did
Individual awards markets are supposed to price role and context, not just talent. A defenceman changing teams changes almost everything that produces Norris votes: power-play quarterback duty, ice time, the quality of the forwards ahead of him, and, most of all, how often his team is on television in March.
Hughes at +400 behind Makar at +300 is close to where a market would have him with either roster. That is a market saying the individual case is strong enough to survive the move, which is defensible, but it also means you are not being paid for the transition risk.
Behind the top two, Zach Werenski sits at +550, Rasmus Dahlin at +700, Lane Hutson and Moritz Seider at +1000, Evan Bouchard at +1200, Miro Heiskanen at +2250 and Charlie McAvoy at +2500. Matthew Schaefer is quoted at +2000 as a second-year defenceman, and Adam Fox, Jackson LaCombe and Jake Sanderson share +3000.
The Makar complication
The favourite has his own situation. Makar turns 28 during the coming season and becomes an unrestricted free agent next summer. Colorado projects more than $32 million in 2027-28 cap space with roughly $20 million of it spoken for the moment he signs, and Brent Burns, Nicolas Roy, Artturi Lehkonen and Scott Wedgewood are all unrestricted alongside him.
A contract year on a contender is historically good for award voting rather than bad for it. If you think Makar at +300 is short, the argument has to be about Colorado’s season, not about Makar.
Where the value sits
The interesting names are further down. Werenski at +550 comes with a player who has publicly tied his future to whether Columbus contends. Hutson at +1000 is a Montreal defenceman signed below $9 million on a team ranked fourth by ESPN’s panel.
Hughes at +400 is the correct player at a price that assumes nothing goes wrong with a mid-career move to a new system. That assumption may be right. You are just not getting paid for it.
Odds quoted were available in late July 2026 and will have moved.
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