Especially the first half of the day, I will be wandering back and forth between work, Twitter and the various national hockey news sites. This post will serve as an open thread for comments throughout the day and also community discussion.
12:16am — My gut feeling is that Tuesday will be a fairly quiet day on the Hurricanes front. I would expect to see 1-2 more rental deals that ship out impending unrestricted free agents (McClement, Tennyson, Ryan) and though it could easily wait until summer, I would not at all be surprised to see Murphy swapped for a similar age/situation prospect.
But I do think there is some chance that Francis starts working on the 2017-18 roster and does something bigger.
12:18am QUESTION: How many Canes deals do we see today?
7:50am — What? No deals while we were sleeping? I think the unspectacular version of good for Francis today would be to trade Jay McClement and then either Derek Ryan or Matt Tennyson and net 2 mid-round picks. If Francis managed to collect a fourth and a fifth, he would have added most of an extra 2017 draft with a second through fifth round picks.
9:37am — Most interesting snippet in action-less day so far is Renaud Lavoie from TVA Sports out of Montreal saying on Twitter that “Hurricanes are looking at what they can get for Teuvo Teravainen.”
This seems unlikely, but it’s trade deadline day, so let’s at least consider it…
Teravainen could be appealing for a team looking to add skill on the cheap for 2016-17 and then beyond. Teravainen’s tiny 2016-17 salary of $894,000 fits in even the tightest of salary cap situations as an restricted free agent coming off a modest season, he should be fairly inexpensive on his new contract this summer.
But those exact same 2 things are part of what make him valuable to the budget-constrained Hurricanes. Awhile back, I did write that I would consider including Elias Lindholm in a deal to add a true C1 (Duchene at the time). With Lindholm rising and Teravainen being more ‘meh’, just maybe Francis is exploring a bigger deal to add a top-end forward and Teravainen is the 1 young roster player, he is willing to include in such a deal?
So the bigger thing for me is not so much that Teravainen’s name might be out there, but that I think it would imply that Francis is looking to do a bigger deal to upgrade at the forward position.
Interesting anyway…
11:29am — Elliotte Friedman said on Twitter that Edmonton is looking to move the contract of Andrew Ference who is on long-term injured reserve. His contract is for $3.25 million and is up at the end of the 2016-17 season, so basically taking him in trade would be the equivalent of paying ~$800,000 in cash to buy whatever (likely draft pick(s)) was received for taking him.
While Francis has shown a willingness to do provide salary cap relief services in return for compensation, I think this deal is different. The Bickell/Teravainen deal saw Francis get a good young player that is costly to obtain otherwise. In addition, though overpaid at $4.5 million, Bickell also represented a roster player who filled a need for size at the forward position.
Unless the return is incredibly high, I do not see Francis adding $800,000 to whatever the Hurricanes are already expected to lose this year to buy a draft pick or 2.
1:10pm — Vanek deal (third round pick) makes Stalberg return of same look good. I am high on Stalberg, but he is a depth forward/great fourth-liner. As we creep closer to 3pm with many decent defenseman rentals (think it is right that all of Kulikov, Quincey and Franson are all still available) still sitting with original teams, Francis’ move to act early and collect on Hainsey looks better and better by the minute.
2:47pm — All is still quiet at 1400 Edwards Mill Road with Hurricanes general manager Ron Francis scheduled to address the media at 3pm. As such, I think the deal that most impacts the Hurricanes is a deal that just happened between Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. Somehow Steve Yzerman pawned off Valtteri Filppula and his $5 million annual salary through 2016-17 for Mark Streit who is basically an offset for the remainder of 2016-17 only paying only a fourth and a conditional seventh round pick to Philadelphia as payment for taking the bad contract.
So how does this impact the Hurricanes you ask? Tampa Bay was in a real bad place trying to make the salary cap math work for 2017-18 and also had an issue with too many forwards to protect. Dropping Filppula just freed up $5 million for Yzerman. After the Bickell/Teravainen trade last summer, I liked Francis’ chances of stepping in to steal a good forward for a modest price or possibly taking someone like Jason Garrison for nothing to help with the math. The pressure on Yzerman just decreased and with it the potential for Francis and the Hurricanes to benefit from it.
3:10pm Per Andrew Schnittker on Twitter, Francis confirmed that the Hurricanes did not make any trades today.
I will post a recap of the trade deadline in total including an evaluation of Francis’ work and also impacts of other transactions on the building of the 2017-18 opening day roster.
The more deals the better. The less of the existing roster that shows up next october, the better.
I haven’t been able to get a good feel for Teravainen’s potential. That’s not necessarily a good thing after 80% of a season has slid by. Was he limited by his playing partners or is he just a guy with some potential but doesn’t do any one thing particularly well enough to justify a permanent spot in the lineup? He likely has some value on the market since he’s young and somewhat skilled, but maybe he’s a better fit on another team – at least at this point in the Canes re-building process. I would imagine he’s the type of player who goes in a larger trade…something in the Faulk, Tervainen and d prospect to Colorado for Duchesne (and picks) scenario. Not saying that trade makes sense but according to most media outlets Colorado is looking for that type of package coming their way.
Give TT a line with one bigger body and someone who can find him when he has some space and he will shine. He played great with Staal and Aho.
If the Canes could get two decent forwards before October, they could automatically get more out of TT too. Imagine someone like Radulov on the same line.
Totally agree … he needs a big body on his line.
Canes in general could use a power forward from the mold of Wayne Simmonds on both scoring lines – the kind of player who plays/contributes without needing the puck on his stick, has the habit of going to the crease when no more pressing need is available and who has enough skill/skating to hang with skill players and capitalize on scoring chances.
Gauthier being ahead of schedule next fall would be a pleasant surprise, but I would not bank on that over the summer if I was Ron Francis.
Your article from a few weeks ago regarding Gauthier’s play and overall deficiencies as described by the interviewee was sobering for anyone looking for him to break into the lineup in 2017-18. It sounded as if at least a year in the AHL was going to be the likely scenario in his immediate future.
Yes. And I think that schedule is normal. Key is that he has physical skill set and his mobility/skating which often holds power forwards back is decent, so there is a chance he rises up in training camp.
TBH… (to be honest), very few of our forwards are untouchable (if any). Soooo, if there’s a real stud out there that’s available…I’d be willing and happy to move as many as it takes…
RF go pull the trigger on a trade for Duchene, OR LANDESKOG!
Gittrrr done!!!
It’s all about value. If we get value out of a trade fine, but there is zero point to blowing it all up now just because of hurt feelings that we miss the playoffs again.
We have the pieces to get that top-line forward and it’s up to Ron to get us the Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson thievery, not just deplete our system on the first deal that comes along. Colorado’s asking price for Duchene and Landeskog is absolutely ridiculous and only a moron would pay what Sakic’s asking right now. Come summer, come expansion draft teams will be jumping to manipulate rosters to minimize damage.
Then will be Ron’s best time to strike.
Let’s also not forget that Wallmark Zykov and Roy are also bigger forwards so player development is still key here. And anybody who watched the Florida game knows that they have far worse attendance issues than we ever have, so chill and enjoy the correctly done, patient rebuild. The big splash is still coming.