If you are checking in looking for notes from Carolina Hurricanes prospect camp day 2, try HERE.
With a busy slate of actual hockey this week with the Carolina Hurricanes prospect camp, Friday’s Daily Cup of Joe is a lighter look at a couple outlandish Carolina Hurricanes trivia questions. The post was prompted by the recent James Wisniewski buy out that saw his Hurricanes career last all of 47 seconds in a single shift before he was injured. This fits the category of “outlandish Hurricanes trivia” in a couple ways which prompted me to think of a couple others that come to mind.
Which Hurricane player had the biggest salary cap hit of all time?
When people think of enormous salary cap hits, single year salaries of players like Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews come to mind. When people think longer-term, contracts of players like Shea Weber, Zach Parise and Ryan Suter come to mind. But the budget conscious Hurricanes once topped all of them with an outlandish CBA math special. At the tail end of the 2011-12 season, the a promising college free agent named Jeremy Welsh finished his college season and in the process became a free agent. The Hurricanes signed him to a somewhat normal 1-year entry-level deal that paid him $832,500 at the NHL level, $70,000 at the AHL level and a signing bonus of $92,500.
But that is when the CBA math kicked in. Welsh was signed at the very end of the season, so his full signing bonus was received for only 1 day of work during the 2011-12 NHL season. When prorated over a full season, the cap hit was an astounding $17.9 million, far and away topping much bigger names and making the Carolina Hurricanes the biggest of the salary cap big spenders at least as far as legal math goes.
Which Hurricane goalie sports an 0-1-0 record despite never allowing a goal at the NHL level?
You read the right. A Hurricanes goalie, in his NHL debut no less, managed to lose a hockey game without allowing a goal. To this day long-time Charlotte Checkers goalie Mike Murphy sports a perfect 1.000 save percentage in 2 NHL appearances but somehow carries an 0-1-0 record. How is that possible? On December 6, 2011, Murphy relieved Ward with 8:37 remaining in a game that had gotten out of hand. The Hurricanes were trailing 6-4 and on their way to a loss. Murphy was a perfect 2 for 2 making saves before being pulled for an extra attacker. Calgary subsequently scored an empty net goal to make it 7-4. But the Hurricanes then stormed back and scored twice in the last minute to make the final 7-6. For deciding NHL wins and losses for goalies the loss goes to the goalie who gives up the deciding goal. In this case, the deciding goal was the seventh that occurred after Murphy was pulled for the extra attacker. So despite the fact that he was not on the ice or charged with a goal against, Murphy is the goalie of record for this seventh and deciding goal. Murphy has thus far played only 1 additional NHL game a few days later in which he was a perfect 7 for 7 making him a perfect 9 for 9 in net at the NHL level but with a 0-1-0 record. At least he did not get tagged with a loss in the second game. 🙂
Which Hurricane player earned the most per time played?
This is of course the James Wisniewski question. In 2015-16, Wisniewski earned $5 million. He will be paid $1 million in each of the next 2 years as terms for his buy out. His total of $7 million of salary calculates out to be $148,936 per SECOND played in a Carolina Hurricanes uniform rivaling even Jeremy Welsh’s story for craziest financial trivia question answer in Hurricanes history.
Who has more crazy Hurricanes hockey trivia questions? Feel free to post in comments or send them along via email or Twitter, and I will try to update this post with a couple more.
Go Canes!
