NHL Rumors: A busy offseason lies ahead for the Carolina Hurricanes

Hurricanes GM on their players with a year left, a pure goal-scorer, and their UFA goalies

Walt Ruff of NHL.com: Carolina Hurricanes president and GM Don Waddell when asked if there have been any preliminary talks with players who are entering the year of their contracts. Included in that group are Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, Brady Skjei, and Brett Pesce.

“We have a plan in place. We haven’t started negotiations yet, but the guys that are pending unrestricted free agents are going to come quickly. We’ll talk to Seth Jarvis and Martin Necas about their extensions too, but the good thing is that those guys are restricted (free agents) after this year, so if we don’t get something done, it’s not the end of the world. The other guys, we’d like to go into the new year knowing we have them for the future.”

Waddell when asked if they need to add a pure goal-scorer.

“It’s not like we’re looking for just a pure goal-scorer. We’d like to get a little heavier, if possible… We also need guys, like Teuvo, to have a bounce-back year. He had a tough year this year. And guys like Jarvis are only going to get better. So we might have a lot of that goal-scoring internally, and there are other things that we might be able to address then.”

Walt Ruff: Waddell on pending UFA goaltenders Antti Raanta and Frederik Andersen: “Both goalies want to come back, we know that… We just want to make sure we do our due diligence, not only on our guys but (also) make sure we know what the options are.”

A Sebastian Aho extension will be a priority for the Hurricanes

Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic: Carolina Hurricanes GM Don Waddell will make a contract extension for Sebastian Aho a priority this offseason. He’s got one year left on his contract and is eligible for an extension on July 1st.

Believe that Aho wants to remain in Carolina. Think the Hurricanes will be looking for an eight-year deal. Two years ago Aho’s agent Gerry Johannson got Brayden Point an eight-year deal at a $9.5 million cap hit. The Hurricanes may hope for under $9.5 million.

Aho has 468 points in 520 games and Point has 463 points in 499 games.