Jim Benning seemed to know it right away.



He had just stepped off the stage at the American Airlines Centre in Dallas at the 2018 NHL Draft and returned to his table.



The Canucks general manager leaned back in his seat and gave a huge thumbs-up: “That was a home run,” he said with a big grin.



To his right, scouting director Judd Brackett leaned over, smiling. “You can take a deep breath there,” he said.



They were talking, of course, about Quinn Hughes. And they could finally exhale because they’d just watched their future No. 1 defenceman don a Canucks jersey.



“We had told the agent and family that if Quinn was there at seven, he wasn’t getting past us,” Benning told The Athletic.



The mystery that remains, however, is why Hughes was still available for Vancouver at seventh overall in the first place. How did six teams end up passing on a top-pairing defenceman in a league where...