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.

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