The Carolina Hurricanes have an issue: keeping highly expert players there long-term. One in all the most important reasons is that those high-skilled players don’t fit into that Rod Brind’Amour variety of play. The Hurricanes are too defensive-minded and never offensive-minded to win a Stanley Cup.
Carolina had been searching for highly expert people to hitch Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho for years. However the Hurricanes never had that special player to place them excessive. And for years under General Manager Don Waddell, Carolina was so passive on the trade deadline. They didn’t want to usher in rental players and surrender assets. Waddel even knew those players may not stay there in the long run, so why do it?
Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky Should Have Known Mikko Rantanen Did Not Want in Carolina
12 months after yr, the Hurricanes were rumored to be involved in those big trades, but they never pulled the trigger until last yr, after they acquired Jake Guentzel from the Pittsburgh Penguins. Many analysts were amazed that Carolina actually traded for a rental player. That just isn’t their MO. Normally, the Hurricanes attempt to pursue players with term or someone within the off-season.
But they got Guentzel, and it was a fit. As Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky told Jeff Marek on the Sheet on Each day Faceoff, there have been plans to sign him, however the salary cap got in the best way. It’s not like he didn’t wish to stay, unlike Mikko Rantanen.
“It’s not something that happens on a regular basis. People keep connecting it to Guentzel. So, it was a really similar situation in a method, which is we traded for him, knowing he wouldn’t sign an extension the day we traded for him because he had been with one team his whole profession,” Tulsky said. “That was where his mind was. He didn’t have his head around signing anywhere else straight away. He ended up coming in, attending to know us, really liking it, and desired to be here. That’s what happens more often than not.
We couldn’t get that one done because we had salary cap issues. We had a pair of huge name free agents coming up, and we were really tight against it, and we would have liked a while to work out what we actually had available. And clearly, on reflection it could have been great to only get that one done and work out the opposite stuff, but we were attempting to fit every thing and attempting to make the team pretty much as good as we could. It happens.”
That is a special version of what Rod Brind’Amour said on Monday, when he said Guentzel was not offered a contract. As Tulsky notes, Rod speaks in code and wishes to be decoded.
“Guentzel was the totally opposite thing. If we had offered him the contract, if we offered him that, then, he’s here,” Brind’Amour said. “But we didn’t, for whatever reason. That’s a special conversation.”
Trade Deadline Fallout: Mikko Rantanen – Why Dallas and Not Carolina?
Nonetheless, Rantanen didn’t wish to be there from the beginning. That seems very clear from what has been coming out over the past couple of days. Yes, the shock of the trade, however the styles never fit, and he knew before he got there that Carolina was not the fit for him. He desired to be in Colorado, out west, and on a team that fit who he was.
However the query needs to be raised: Do players wish to play for the owner? Fair or not, Tom Dundon is notorious for shorting players on their contracts. And it appears even the Hurricanes’ head coach knows it when he talked on Monday about players leaving.
“All the opposite guys that walked out of here, I’m afraid it’s simply because they got paid way more money than we were offering,” Brind’Amour said. “All of them desired to stay.”
We all know Dougie Hamilton would still be a member of the Carolina Hurricanes, however the owner didn’t wish to pay him $9 million a season. The Hurricanes value players at a certain level; you either agree or disagree. We saw that play out with Martin Necas last yr before he got traded as a part of the initial Rantanen trade.
NHL Trade: Mikko Rantanen Traded to Dallas Stars from Carolina
There have been reports that Carolina was offering Mikko Rantanen a deal somewhere within the $12-$14 million range. We are going to never know, but you may have to wonder if Necas asking for Aho money or Jesperi Kotkaniemi was the writing on the wall, he was out of town.
However the Hurricanes operate with an internal salary cap. They should not a team that takes swings, and after they do, it normally doesn’t repay. The trend continues of expert players not staying there. Carolina is a team that plays a certain way. Sometimes, offensive players of a certain ilk get limited there. Whether the case is, the Hurricanes need to vary the status of top expert players not wanting to be there.
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