What to do with Quinton Hughes ?

If I may pose a question: What is Quinton Hughes ?

Sure, everyone in the Vancouver Canucks media and fanbase have drunk the kool-aid on the 5'7" 165 pound defenseman Quinton Hughes whom the Canucks selected 7th overall in the 2018 NHL draft.

Everyone that is except me.

On August 4th, 2018, at a junior prep game in the BC Interior I was able to get my first look at Hughes as his Team USA played Team Canada.

I wasn't impressed with the 6 goals he was a part of giving up.

In fact if Team Canada hadn't taken their foot off the gas pedal - it could have easily hit 10-0 or 12-0.

Since Hughes main job is a defender... and since his team gave up a touchdown and he wasn't playing football it leaves one feeling pretty baffled about what to do with young Quinton Hughes.

My first impression is that there's no way in hell he's ever going to play defense in the NHL.

His speed is a massive concern. Not his lateral speed - he's as shifty as you'd expect a 5'7" hockey player to be.

No, I'm talking about his ability to not get burned on the outside by much larger players with longer strides and higher top end speeds.

Hughes has a massive problem there. And if he can't get ahead of those bigger faster players he sure as hell can't use his strength to stop players that are 40-50 pounds bigger than him from going straight to the net. They'll walk him all night long.

I know this much - Olli Juolevi, the Canucks 2016 5th overall pick from Finland, another diminutive D man got Canucks President of Hockey Operations Trevor Linden fired.

Juolevi's strength and speed have come to the forefront as an issue. If the Canucks had chosen the athlete, Mikhail Sergachev, the 225 pound Russian who is an absolute S T U D on the blueline, then Linden would still have a job. But they chose the diminutive Juolevi and they're still waiting for help on the blueline.

I know Pettersson, the Canucks 5th overall pick in the 2017 NHL draft, has the same issue and it's going to put Benning on the block.

Linden's been fired (technically back in February) and current Canucks GM Jim Benning is about to get fired when people see that Elias Pettersson is too small for the NHL and suffers from a lack of straight away speed.

What makes speed?

Thighs. You need enormous amounts of power in your largest bones in your body - your thighs - to make the skates go up and down. Enormous strength in your lower body is required to generate the speed required to play at the NHL.

Some 5'7" bodies can have that built in to their bodies if their body weight is around 180 pounds to 200 pounds with 5-7% body fat.

But Hughes doesn't fall into that category.

The Canucks have drafted a series of Ectomorphs -  lean with difficulty building muscle. Juolevi, Pettersson and now Hughes.

Essentially what the Canucks have been doing under Benning and Brackett (head scout) is going to the discount pile and picking up what they term to be "bargains" because these ectomorphs have high skill levels.

The problem is the NHL isn't about high skill levels. It's about straight up speed.

And for straight up speed you need mesomorph. A mesomorph is the athlete - easily picks up muscle - you see this in a Jake Virtanen, Bo Horvat and Brock Boeser. They are athletes.

And so the Canucks fired the guy who drafted these athletes and hired a guy who doesn't understand the concept of what it takes to play in the NHL today.

It got Linden fired because ultimately he agreed to the change of head scout.

When you hear someone like TSN's broadcaster Mike Johnson, who played in the NHL, say of Pettersson at the World Championships which he was covering - "he's slow" it's a red flag.

It's a red flag for Pettersson because he doesn't have the body type to put on the leg muscle to increase his foot speed. Not quickly. Perhaps in 5 years.

And that brings us back to Quinton Hughes.

What do you do with a guy who suffers from the same issue?
People have compared Hughes to Brian Leetch and Duncan Keith - that's preposterous.
Their straight-ahead speed in both cases was perhaps 2nd or 3rd best in the NHL at the height of their careers. It was virtually impossible to get behind a Leetch or a Keith. You couldn't turnstile them.

So what do you do with a defenseman who has all the earmarks of a pylon?

There's no use getting mad at me - the video doesn't lie - the guy got turnstiled. He's slow top-end speed. Combine that with a useless shot and you can see why six other teams ahead of the Canucks passed on the nifty little D man.

I honestly don't know what the hell you do with Quinton Hughes.
I do seriously doubt that he can play D at the NHL level.

That brings up two NHL players in the past facing a similiar problem - Wendell Clark and Scott Walker.

Both Walker and Clark were drafted as defense-men and moved to center and wing. Both had tremendous careers after the move. Both were deemed too small to play D at the next level and I think that's what you have here in Hughes. Nothing in his defensive game has shown that he's remotely able to physically handle the rigors of a NHL season on the blueline.

I think you could salvage the draft pick by moving Quinton Hughes to center ice like his brother, Jack.

Quinton does have a very similar game to a former Vancouver Canuck, and highly successful one, Cliff Ronning.

Hughes can move laterally like Ronning and has Ronning's play-making ability.

I'm highly confused as to how Hughes has made it this far without someone moving him to the center ice position to be honest.

He'll be much better suited at the center ice position, say a 3rd line center that can really change the pace for a team just as Cliff Ronning did.

But I don't think this will be a problem Jim Benning will face. I think he will be fired late this year or early next year as it becomes apparent the "brilliant drafting" such as Elias Pettersson has been nothing more than picking scraps from the discount bin.

When Central Scouting says small, difficulty with speed, they mean it. It's not a joke. It's not something you can fix with a wave of a magic wand.

Speed is built in the weight room. Period. And it's built with genetics. And going against that fact gets GMs fired.

I said it when they drafted these guys and I'll say it again - you'd better damned well make sure they fit the size and speed requirement for entry to the NHL when you draft 18 year olds. Because it's your job if you don't.

And just a side note -- the Canucks selected Jet Woo in the 2nd Round of the 2018 NHL draft as a "tough, rugged defenseman" -- well you might want to tell that to Brady Tkachuk's hands who were fed to Woo's face at the end of the game. Woo is another pick by the Canucks that make you just scratch your head - tough guys that are 6' 195 pounds??? He got pistoned by Tkachuk who isn't even in the NHL yet. Imagine what a true tough guy like a Tom Wilson in Washington or Reaves in Vegas would do to Woo.

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