GM Tulsky believes Hurricanes in strong position to retain Rantanen after trade
With Mikko Rantanen set to make his Hurricanes’ debut, the Hurricanes now on the clock to try to convince the pending free agent to avoid going to the open market.
admin
The Carolina Hurricanes pulled off one of the more memorable in-season blockbuster trades in recent memory after acquiring Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall Friday night.
General manager Eric Tulsky said that the idea of trading for Rantanen came about in the off-season, and negotiations started to pick up until about six to eight weeks ago.
The Hurricanes were motivated to get the deal done and pushed to get it over the finish line over the last two weeks.
“We wanted to get him as early as we can,” Tulsky told reporters on Saturday. “We want to have as much time with him on our team as possible.”
What also took time to get a deal done was that there were other options on the table for the Hurricanes to consider.
As Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported, Carolina was also in conversations with the Vancouver Canucks about a potential trade involving either J.T. Miller or Elias Pettersson.
“As we started to feel like teams needed to make a decision, that meant we needed everybody to get their best offers on the table,” Tulsky said about the multiple trade options the Hurricanes were exploring. “And it was both on our side and on our counterparties. Everybody had multiple offers that they had to weigh and decide where they wanted to go.
“So, it was sort of time for everyone to figure out what they wanted to do, and this deal got done. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with other teams but it is a complicated dance right now.”
With Rantanen set to make his Hurricanes’ debut, Tulsky is now on the clock to try to convince the pending free agent to avoid going to the open market.
Even though the trade is just a day old, Tulsky did say that there have been preliminary discussions with Rantanen’s agent, but he is not rushing into trying to get a deal done,
“It’s very preliminary, it was first conversations,” Tulksy said. “It’s a big deal, and it’ll take a little bit of time, just like the trade did. We’re getting to work on it as early as we can.
“But part of it is he needs to spend a little bit of time getting to know us and making sure he likes the city, the team and the players. That’ll happen over the next few weeks, but we will be talking with his agent throughout.”
The Hurricanes clearly saw a chance to add a dynamic player to their lineup even though it cost them a productive player in Martin Necas. Tulsky sees Rantanen as a game-breaker who improves the offensive skill level of the team.
On top of that, Tulsky said the acquisition of Taylor Hall shouldn’t be overlooked.
“One of the things that we felt our team could stand to have was a little bit of an upgrade on skill and offensive punch,” Tulsky explained.
“Mikko is an incredible offensive force and Taylor brings a lot of skill, some size and speed, but we think he’s going to fit and upgrade our ability to score.”
This is not the first time the Hurricanes have made a splash to grab one of the top targets heading into the trade deadline.
Last season, the team acquired Jake Guentzel from the Pittsburgh Penguins, but were unable to retain him as he left in free agency.
While there are similarities between the situations involving Rantanen’s and Guentzel’s contract status, Tulsky believes the Hurricanes are in a better situation cap-wise.
“Last year, if you take what we exited the year with and what those players ended up signing for if we tried to keep all of them, we would have been about $20 million over the cap,” Tulsky said. “So trying to figure out how you stretch on a player when your roster is $20 million over the cap is hard.
“As things stand today, depending on where next year’s cap is. We have about $35 million to $40 million of cap space next year, so it’s a different king of conversation.
“We don’t feel nearly as constrained. So instead the question is, ‘How many more good pieces can we add and how much do we want to give?’ You never want to just waste the space because we want to be able to add another player, and another player after that.”
Rantanen and Hall have joined the Hurricanes on the road as they take on the New York Islanders on Saturday night.
