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There is a black Escalade waiting outside of Jack’s house the morning after Quinn is traded. He gets a text from an unknown number, the driver, when the car arrives, and Quinn starts forcing himself to gather up the belongings that seem to accumulate in random corners of Jack’s house whenever he visits; his phone charger and beanie and travel-sized toothpaste. The news still feels unreal, and he has a hard time shaking the feeling that this is just another normal day packing up on a road trip, and once he’s zipped up his suitcase Jack will drive him back to the Canucks hotel to meet up with the team. It reminds him of the morning after the draft, when he’d woken up in the hotel room in Dallas and had realized he still felt like the same person, even as the world changed around him.
Jack and Luke are both there, even though it’s barely eight in the morning, and they help him carry out his suitcase and gear bag. It’s a quiet affair, none of the usual ribbing they have for each other. “Mom called me last night,” Jack says to him between bites of scrambled eggs, “I told her you were doing fine, that they’re getting a car and charter plane for you. She said to call her back.”
Quinn looks down at his plate, “Tell her I’ll call her when I get to Minnesota.” He hasn’t responded to any calls or texts except the ones from his agent and his new GM, Guerin. He’s already been removed from the Canucks group chat, but saw a flurry of goodbye texts from guys he was close with in their private chats. Jack nods, and they clean up together in silence while Luke eats his own breakfast.
Quinn opens the back door to the Escalade. Jack already put his stuff in the trunk, when Quinn went back inside to get another, non-Canucks beanie. He fidgets with the edge of his coat for a second, trying to find the right words. Jack just wraps his arms around and hugs him, “Have a safe flight. Good luck in Minny. We’ll see you at Christmas.”
Jack steps back after a minute and Luke hugs him too, and Quinn wishes again that he was staying here, that he could play hockey with his brothers. He pats Luke on the head and tells them goodbye, and waves as he gets into the back of the car. The divider is up so he can’t see the driver, but when he closes the door the engine starts, and they pull out of Jack’s long, winding driveway.
Quinn is familiar with the forty-minute ride to Newark airport from Jack’s house. He puts in his AirPods, and tucks his hands into the sleeves of his jacket, trying to get warm. He’s ready to zone out to a history podcast until he gets to the plane. If he was smart, he’d be reviewing the last Wild game, seeing where he could fit into their system. Getting ready to prove himself to them. But, he reminds himself, he’s no longer captain. No longer the face of the franchise.
They’re pulling up to the gate at the entrance to Jack’s neighborhood when the division between him and the driver lowers. Quinn looks up and makes eye contact with the driver in the rearview mirror. He does a double-take. He knows those eyes. He had a poster of the man on his wall until he started at Michigan.
“You’re Mario Lemieux?” Quinn finds himself saying, and he thinks to himself this driver’s gonna have a story about Quinn Hughes mistaking him for fucking Mario Lemieux.
“Hello, Quinn. I’m sure the last twelve hours have been stressful for you,” his accent makes the ‘H’ slip off of hello, “I’m here to provide support while you’re between teams.”
Quinn tries to look him in the eye, but Mario’s eyes are back on the road, his hands on the wheel at ten and two. “How did you get here?” Quinn asks.
“I drove,” Mario says, which, Pittsburgh and New Jersey aren’t that far from each other, but why an NHL franchise owner would drive to pick up a trade to another team Quinn doesn’t know. Mario seems to catch Quinn’s confusion, “That was a joke. We’re in a pocket universe, is the best way to explain it, until you get to the Wild.”
“Pocket universe?”
“We’re not in the normal progression of spacetime.”
Quinn nods, as though this clears up his confusion. “It happens during trades, sometimes. Just until you get to your new team,” Mario says, “I’m here to talk to you about the trade. I understand it was somewhat unexpected.”
Quinn huffs out a laugh, “You could say that.”
“I was lucky, to stay on the Penguins my whole career. Of course, it was a different era of hockey, then,” Mario muses, “And I won’t pretend I didn’t know other players were traded away to keep me happy.” If Miller had been the leading goal-scorer of the team, much less one of the greatest players in the sport, Quinn would have minded him being traded away a lot more, no matter what he did to the room.
“Vancouver has been struggling for the last couple years,” Mario says, like Quinn doesn’t know that, “One player can’t hold together an entire team.”
“It wasn’t just me. We were working together,” Quinn says, thinking about the ‘24 playoffs, the brief, glorious light of playing on the best team in the West, before Edmonton beat them down, before they started to beat each other down.
Quinn slumps lower in his seat, “Vancouver just wants to get rid of everyone, start rebuilding.” Almost the whole core from the ‘24 season is gone. Quinn was the last piece.
“They’re going to finish last in the Pacific,” Mario says absentminded, glancing behind him as he changes lanes, “But that’s not relevant to you anymore. I’m here to talk about the Wild.”
“What about the Wild?”
“Minnesota is strong. They’ve been building a team, players who don’t just work together but play for each other. They have brotherhood, leadership. They want to see the same feeling reciprocated from you.”
“Not all of us want to be so… open,” Quinn says, and Mario gives him a little nod, like he agrees, “I’m not saying you have to make the press happy. God knows they’re never happy. But the Wild has a good system going. You can try doing what they’re doing, see if it works for you.”
He pauses, and a wry smile curls at his mouth, “See if you like playing for a winning team.”
Quinn is reminded that Mario is an owner. His job is to make promises, ones he knows he can’t keep. But Quinn finds himself believing in what Mario says.
Mario lets him sit in silence as they inch through traffic towards the airport. At least the charter plane takes off from a private runway, so Mario drops him off right on the tarmac. He gets out of the car too, and Quinn blanches– what if anyone recognizes him?
“Let me get your luggage,” Mario says, smoothly moving past Quinn to open the trunk.
“Shoot, kid. Looks like your gear bag is missing,” Mario pops his head around to look at Quinn, one hand on the back of his neck, sheepish. Quinn pulls out his phone to call Jack, and sees there’s already a missed text from him. You left your gear bag here. He stuffs his phone back in his pocket.
“I’ll call a friend, he’ll grab it and bring it to Minny for you,” Mario says, and Quinn glares at him in a flash of irritation, “What, is your friend going to be Jagr? Gretzky? Any more hall-of-famers coming to see me humiliated?”
Mario hands his backpack over, his forehead wrinkled, like he’s concerned and amused at the same time, “No, Quinn. Just a friend willing to run an errand for me.”
Quinn swings his backpack over his shoulder, the anger settling back into bone-deep exhaustion, “Okay.” Mario claps him on the back and leads him towards one of the planes, the boarding stairs already down.
“Good luck. The Wild will be a good home for you,” Mario gives him another somewhat condescending smile, “If you let them in.”
He turns and ambles back towards the waiting Escalade. Quinn wonders how he’ll get back to Pittsburgh, if he’s flying commercial, then reminds himself that Mario Lemieux and his hockey magic are none of his business. He shakes it off and continues up the airplane steps, awkwardly dragging his suitcase behind him.
It’s weird being on the plane by himself. There’s a pilot in the cockpit, he waves at Quinn as he comes through the cabin, and Quinn is relieved to see it’s just a normal middle-aged pilot, not a hockey player, but there’s no flight attendants or staff members or teammates to make the plane feel less empty.
He texts Jack back. Someone’s gonna pick it up from you and bring it to me. Sry. Jack should be at practice by now. He doesn’t respond.
Takeoff is uneventful, Quinn just shoves his AirPods in and finally listens to his history podcast. He’s in the middle part of the Roman Empire, after the rise and before the fall. Once they reach altitude he unbuckles his seatbelt and goes to lie down on one of the couches in the back, the ones usually taken up by the video gamers or poker players. He tries to nap, and spends at least thirty minutes with his head down in his arms, eyes closed. But he feels too unsettled, by the trade and Mario fucking Lemieux, and eventually he gets up to use the bathroom. He tries to slide open the door, but it won’t budge. He pulls a little harder, and the door moves like someone else is opening it. Matthew Tkachuk steps out of the tiny cubicle. “Hey, Quinny,” he says.
Matthew Tkachuk is on the Minnesota Wild charter plane, wearing a kind of horrible Panthers-branded tracksuit. He extends one hand to Quinn, and Quinn instinctively gives him a little fistbump.
“Don’t you have a game today?” Quinn asks. He needs to get off this plane. He needs to get back into the normal progression of spacetime. “Yeah,” Matthew says, “Which is why I’m making this quick.”
“How did you get here?” Quinn asks as Matthew makes his way through the cabin. He ignores Quinn and sits down on the couch opposite the one Quinn had been using, making a gesture for Quinn to join him.
“I wanted off the Flames,” Matthew says. Quinn sits. “But when I got traded, it still sucked. I was the franchise player, I wanted to be there for life.” He draws a hand over his face, mussing his curls, “Fuck, I’m not good at this. I got Kessel when I was traded, he’s better at this sort of thing than me. He’s busy today, or he’d be here.”
They sit in silence for a moment. Quinn has like, a lot of questions, starting with how Matthew Tkachuk got onto his plane, but Matthew seems like he needs a minute. “I bet it was good when you were first drafted,” Matthew suggests, and Quinn nods. The Canucks had been his home, at the start. He’d wanted to retire there.
“Then just, the room got weird. And it felt like it was your fault.”
Quinn nods again, and winces,“It is my fault. I’m the captain. Was.”
Matthew shrugs, “I don’t know how much it was or wasn’t your fault, or anything like that. By the end, I wasn’t happy on the Flames. It didn’t make me proud to wear the jersey, it made me tired. And when Johnny,” Matthew’s face creases in pain, “When he left, I decided it was my time to go too.” “I was supposed to lead them. And I couldn’t get the team to work together,” Quinn confesses, “After Miller was traded I thought things would get better. But the room was still broken. I thought I’d get an offseason trade, not this,” he gestures expansively, at the plane around them. Matthew looks like he’s going to say something, then pulls out his phone and starts tapping at it. Quinn sighs and leans back on the couch.
“How do you even have service here?” Quinn asks, irritated. Matthew doesn’t look up, responding, “Pocket universe. Didn’t Lemieux explain anything to you?”
“I have no idea what’s going on here. Today has been the weirdest day of my life,” Quinn says. Matthew just grunts.
Matthew turns his phone around to show him something, “Here, look. This is what they got for you.” It’s a picture from the Canucks Instagram, the players and draft picks Quinn was traded for highlighted on one side. It’s a shitty thing for Matthew to remind him of, the other lives he’s uprooting, the team he’s disrupting. This, three players and a first-round draft pick, is what Quinn Hughes, the sometimes second-best defenseman in the NHL, is worth.
“Thanks, Matty. Wanted to make sure you can still be a pest on IR I guess,” Quinn says, reminded of why he’s never invited Matthew to stay at the lake house even though Brady comes around every summer.
“I only got a conditional first-round pick for my troubles, you’re worth a lot more than I am. Hope you live up to the hype,” Matthew has the sharp voice he uses to chirp players on before he stops for a second, inhales, “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole.”
Quinn gives him a dead-eyed stare, and Matthew laughs at him, the loud, braying laugh all the Tkachuk boys share, “Yeah, well, it kinda sucks when you’re traded, even when you know it’s coming. That’s what I was getting at.”
“Did you ever look at playing with Brady?” Quinn asks. Matthew slides his phone back into his pocket, shaking his head, “We’re not like that. I mean, playing Four Nations was fun with him, but we have no desire to play eighty-two games a year together.”
His expression is sympathetic, “It’s gonna be hard to get to the Devils. Your brothers are already taking up cap space, and they might as well trade Luke away to get you.”
“I know.” Quinn’s agent had made it clear that right now, New Jersey wasn’t an option. Maybe once his contract was up next year, once he was a free agent. He’d take a pay cut to play with Jack and Luke again, he told his agent.
“I was worried about putting on the sweater, making it worth what they’d paid for me,” Matthew says, “And look at me now,” he gestures down at his tracksuit.
“I don’t know if I want to be wearing a whole Wild-themed outfit,” Quinn says. “No, yeah,” Matthew reaches into one of his sweatshirt pockets, “which is why I brought you this.”
He holds out a grey beanie with a little monotone-grey Wild patch on it. Quinn takes it, surprisingly grateful, and puts it in his backpack. “Thanks.”
“Well, I have to get going,” Matthew stands abruptly and heads towards the back of the plane, “The Wild has a good system going. They’ll do right by you.”
Quinn follows him, wondering how the hell Matthew is going to get out of a locked, flying aircraft. Matthew is mumbling to himself, looking at something on his phone again, “Ah, here it is. Going back the way I came in. I’ll see you at the Olympics, Quinny. Good luck until then.”
He goes back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. A second later, Quinn’s ears pop, like the pressure dropped in the cabin. The bathroom door slides open, and it’s empty again.
Quinn goes back to his seat and checks his phone. He doesn’t have any cell service, because he’s in an airplane, and not in a fucking pocket universe or whatever. He lies down to nap again, and this time finally succeeds, drifting off.
***
“Hey, Mr. Hughes?” Someone shakes his shoulder, and Quinn opens his eyes. The cabin lights are dim, and he takes a moment to work out the shape of the pilot, waking him up. Well at least it’s not a hockey player.
“We’re about to start descending. It’s going to be a bit rough, there’s a blizzard over Minneapolis. I need you to strap into one of the seats.”
Quinn grunts and sits up, trying to force sleep from his body. His mouth is sticky, and his clothing always feels gross on his body after he naps. He puts on the seatbelt, storing his backpack at his feet for good measure. The pilot goes back to the cockpit.
He looks out the window. It’s dark, but the lights on the wings illuminate flurries of snowflakes drifting down with the plane. He scrubs at his eyes, exhausted despite the nap.
The descent is bumpy, to say the least. Quinn isn’t really sure what causes turbulence, but at one point they fly through a thick layer of clouds, into more snow underneath, the plane bouncing up and down the whole time, until they finally break through to see the lights of the city below.
The pilot looks relieved, when he leaves the cockpit after they land. He helps Quinn get his suitcase, and lowers the staircase for him. “Thanks,” Quinn says, and the pilot waves. It’s dark outside the airplane, the snow falling in thick, swirling eddies, obscuring the rest of the runway from view. Quinn hopes there’s another car waiting for him.
He zips his jacket and pulls his beanie down securely over his ears. The wind hits him once he’s on the stairs, forcing him to squint as he staggers down to the runway.
He stands on the airfield, looking around for a car, or maybe a building. Behind him, the airstairs are rising up, and then he’s alone in the snowstorm.
He steps forward and comes face-to-face with a goalie mask, the old, plastic, Friday-the-13th kind. The design on it is a spiral, a swirling black line diving inward where the man’s face should be. The goalie is looming, a head taller than Quinn. He’s wearing a thick leather jacket and gloves, and Quinn notices he has big snowboots on. The goalie reaches one hand out. He beckons Quinn forward and turns around, starts walking into the storm.
Quinn follows. He finds that in the wake of the goalie, the wind and snow barely touches him, a little bubble of warmth just for him. They trudge through the snow together, Quinn walking in the lee of the silent goalie, his suitcase dragging through the snow behind him, wondering where the hell they’re going.
Some time later, they walk into a beam of warm light, and Quinn looks up. It’s a streetlight, and ahead of them there’s another one, and another, reaching off into the distance. They follow the beams of light until Quinn can make out the outline of a squat little building. The goalie stops and turns to face Quinn again. His movement is slow, hulking, and he points at the building, then at Quinn.
Quinn looks up at him and shuffles towards the building, and the goalie gives a sharp nod in response. He turns and walks back into the swirling blizzard, his footprints disappearing into the fresh snowfall after every step. The cold floods back through Quinn, wind stinging his face, and he makes his way towards the building with new determination.
The little private airport is blisteringly warm and mostly-empty, a few pilots and flight attendants sitting in the rows of seats, with bored expressions on their faces, staring at their phones. Quinn dusts off the snow before it can melt into his hat and jacket and checks his phone again. It’s nearly six PM. Jack texted him that his gear bag got picked up. He has a text from Guerin, too.
We heard you landed. A car is on its way to pick you up. The text is from only ten minutes ago. He responds with a thumbs up.
He swipes over to his mom’s contact, and tries to call her, but she doesn’t pick up. She’s probably making dinner right now. He sends a message in their family chat. Landed in Minny, waiting for gear bag and car to hotel.
He sits down to wait in a corner by himself. He pulls up YouTube, and searches for the last Wild game. The first clip that pops up shows a brutal turnover, speed and cohesion, tape-to-tape passes connecting until Kaprizov hammers one home.
It’s a far cry from the clunky, awkward hockey the Canucks have been struggling through this season, and at least he’ll be able to play hockey with the Wild, nothing between him and the ice, fresh as the fallen snow.
Quinn fucking hopes he can play well enough for them after the season he’s had, and he focuses back on the video, looking for the holes in their defense, the milliseconds in each play where he could be faster than their current D, skate better, improve the team somehow. The team will be expecting the best from him, and he’ll have to remember how to play like this, not just for himself but for others.
He’s distracted by someone sitting down next to him, the movement catching in the corner of his eye. He looks up and Sidney Crosby is wearing his tasteful (boring) black gameday suit and a long wool coat, Quinn’s bright blue-and-green gear bag at his feet.
“Hey, Quinn,” Crosby extends a hand. Of course Mario couldn’t just have some intern drop off his bag. Quinn shakes Sidney Crosby’s hand, pulling out his Airpods with his free hand.
“I can’t stay long, I’m just doing a favor for Mario. I have to get back home soon,” Sid says. He makes a lot of eye contact, “I just wanted to stop by to say good luck.” He’s already moving to stand back up when Quinn blurts out, “You know, they’ll put your number in the rafters when you retire.”
Sidney gives him a placid, media smile, still won’t let him drop eye contact, “I’m sorry you didn’t get the opportunity to have that in Vancouver. Team loyalty should go both ways. I hope they prove it to you here.”
Sid gives him one last, tight smile before walking towards the exit, his steel-grey coat swaying gently behind him. Quinn looks down at his gear bag, the Canucks logo and his number on the side. He’ll wear the same number in Minnesota, his agent assured him.
The first olive branch Quinn extends to the Minnesota Wild comes in place of an overnighted order placed from Bauer to his hotel. A plain black hockey bag, no name or number. He’s sure Minnesota will offer him a new one when he gets there, but he won’t show up to their rink in Canucks colors.
The car finally arrives, another black Escalade, and after Quinn puts his gear bag and suitcase in the back and checks the driver isn’t a hockey player he tries to call his mom again. This time she picks up, and he watches out the window at the new city lights while she lectures about the trade. When she stops for breath, Quinn interjects, “Mom, it wasn’t what I thought I wanted but… it’s not like Vancouver. They’re building a team, not just a bunch of players wearing the same jersey.”
She stays quiet, and Quinn takes a breath before he tells her, “I think I could be excited to play here.”
He can hear her smile over the phone, “I’m glad, sweetheart. I know it’s not what you wanted.”
“I have time for that, later.”
His mom hums, the absentminded two-tone she does when she’s thinking about what to say, “You and your brothers always seem to feel things very deeply. We’re happy we raised such sensitive boys, but I think it’s made hockey harder for you. The captaincy, for you especially.”
Quinn thinks about the angry fans, about living up to expectations, about the weight of the C on his chest, “I’d rather have it hurt than not care about it, Mom,” he says, trying to find the right words to fit the bittersweet emotion.
“We love you,” his mom says, his dad grunting in agreement in the background, “We’ll see you at Christmas.”
They hang up. Quinn spends the rest of the car ride looking out into the snowy city. The car pulls up to a fancy hotel, even nicer than the ones they usually stay in on road trips. A concierge directs people to collect his bags and ushers him into the elevator, and Quinn is opening the door to his executive suite before he knows it.
There’s a whole table of food, with the buffet trays and little burners they use to keep it warm, and on the couch next to it there are five green-and-white jerseys, folded so his name and number face outwards. He takes a picture and sends it to his family.
After he’s eaten and showered and eaten some more, and the hotel staff cleared out the food, Quinn relaxes back on the king-sized bed. It has been possibly the longest day of his life. He puts his head down on the pillow and finally lets sleep drag him under.
That night he dreams about pond hockey. About cutting fresh marks into wild ice. He’s wearing perfectly broken-in skates, gliding over uneven edges, the puck skittering in front of him like an old film movie, like Quinn can see each frame of the past and present. He can hear the cheers of his teammates in the distance, and he knows that when he passes, they’ll be there to catch the puck.
He dreams about barn hockey, real rural rinks from his time in triple-A, the kind where the floor sagged under the weight of the ice and the roof let the sky in. The loud, boisterous barns where the stands were filled with parents and siblings, and he got a trophy at the end of the season even if they didn’t win.
Quinn even dreams about flashing stadium lights. About announcers, and fans cheering his name. The bubble of bodies around him when he scores a goal, or they win a game, helmets and sticks tapping against each other, a cacophony of noise. He dreams in every color, a mismatch of the jerseys he’s worn, of Devils red-and-black, of the teams his father coached.
He dreams of snow. It’s snowing outside, coming down in sheets of white, and he’s alone on the ice, the other team rushing towards him, an endless stream of opposing colors. The stands are empty. Clean. Quinn Hughes is skating across the rink. He is untouchable. He dekes, he swerves, he dances around the other team. The swirling goalie mask is in his sights, and he can see the trajectory of the shot, already pulling back his stick.
He scores.
*** Quinn wakes up soaked in sweat. He’s missed a few texts from his family, and he responds to Jack’s picture of his breakfast and Luke’s new hairstyle attempt, and he sends his own photo of Minneapolis stretched out from the window of his hotel, finally in daylight.
He packs his gear into the new black bag. It’s transitional, without his name or numbers, an unfamiliar utilitarian feeling. By ten AM he’s ready to go to the rink, and he heads down to meet the last car at the entrance to the hotel. He’s wearing his gameday suit and new grey beanie, the logo facing out.
The car that pulls up is nice, but not the black Escalade Quinn expects. It’s blue, and the kind of big car all hockey players drive, and Jared Spurgeon hops out. His plain hoodie might not have a C stitched on but he wears the captaincy well, his shoulders proud.
“Hey, Quinn. Welcome to the Wild. I heard you could use a ride,” he says.
“I could,” Quinn admits, “Thanks.” Jared is immediately familiar as they load up Quinn’s bags next to Jared’s gear in the back.
“We’re really excited to have you here,” Jared says as he slides into the driver’s seat, “And I’m excited to introduce you to the defensemen corps.”
Quinn sits down in the passenger seat next to him. “I’m looking forward to being here,” he says.