The Carolina Hurricanes have a problem: keeping highly skilled players there long-term. One of the biggest reasons is that those high-skilled players don’t fit into that Rod Brind’Amour style of play. The Hurricanes are too defensive-minded and not offensive-minded to win a Stanley Cup.
Carolina had been looking for highly skilled people to join Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho for years. But the Hurricanes never had that special player to put them over the top. And for years under General Manager Don Waddell, Carolina was so passive at the trade deadline. They did not want to bring in rental players and give up assets. Waddel even knew those players may not stay there in the end, so why do it?
Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky Should Have Known Mikko Rantanen Did Not Want in Carolina
Year after year, the Hurricanes were rumored to be involved in those big trades, but they never pulled the trigger until last year, when they acquired Jake Guentzel from the Pittsburgh Penguins. Many analysts were amazed that Carolina actually traded for a rental player. That is not their MO. Normally, the Hurricanes try to pursue players with term or someone in the off-season.
But they got Guentzel, and it was a fit. As Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky told Jeff Marek on the Sheet on Daily Faceoff, there were plans to sign him, but the salary cap got in the way. It’s not like he did not want to stay, unlike Mikko Rantanen.
“It’s not something that happens all the time. People keep connecting it to Guentzel. So, it was a very similar situation in one way, 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 career,” Tulsky said. “That was where his mind was. He didn’t have his head around signing anywhere else right away. He ended up coming in, getting to know us, really liking it, and wanted to be here. That’s what happens most of the time.
We couldn’t get that one done because we had salary cap issues. We had a couple of big name free agents coming up, and we were really tight against it, and we needed some time to figure out what we actually had available. And obviously, in retrospect it would have been great to just get that one done and figure out the other stuff, but we were trying to fit everything and trying to make the team as good as we could. It happens.”
This is a different 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 needs 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 different conversation.”
Trade Deadline Fallout: Mikko Rantanen – Why Dallas and Not Carolina?
However, Rantanen did not want to be there from the start. That seems very clear from what has been coming out over the past couple of days. Yes, the shock of the trade, but the styles never fit, and he knew before he got there that Carolina was not the fit for him. He wanted to be in Colorado, out west, and on a team that fit who he was.
But the question has to be raised: Do players want 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 other guys that walked out of here, I’m afraid it’s just because they got paid much more money than we were offering,” Brind’Amour said. “They all wanted to stay.”
We know Dougie Hamilton would still be a member of the Carolina Hurricanes, but the owner did not want 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 year before he got traded as part of the initial Rantanen trade.
NHL Trade: Mikko Rantanen Traded to Dallas Stars from Carolina
There were reports that Carolina was offering Mikko Rantanen a deal somewhere in the $12-$14 million range. We will never know, but you have to wonder if Necas asking for Aho money or Jesperi Kotkaniemi was the writing on the wall, he was out of town.
But the Hurricanes operate with an internal salary cap. They are not a team that takes swings, and when they do, it normally does not pay off. The trend continues of skilled 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 change the reputation of top skilled players not wanting to be there.
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