Sunday Standings: Carolina shoots their shot..again
The Hurricanes pick up the best player on the trade rental market for the second year in a row
This week’s big trade that saw the Carolina Hurricanes acquire the biggest rental on the market (for the second year in a row) had me turn for a quick moment back to less than two years ago. Current Carolina GM Eric Tulsky interviewed with the Penguins in May 2023 after Pittsburgh fired Ron Hextall (he interviewed twice, even). We would have liked the bold move to give a full GM job to a first time but clearly successful and whip-smart person. The Pens didn’t stray far from that aisle when they eventually hired Kyle Dubas, who in some ways was a “Tulsky with a track record” type of candidate.
Anyways, though Tulsky is just now in his first season as a GM, promoted by the Hurricanes after all, it’s an ultimately irrelevant yet still unavoidable exercise to imagine what track the Pens may have gone down had they hired him. To be sure, the squad and core is too old to expect an instant turnaround. Things might not look that different in Pittsburgh. We’ll never know one way or another.
But that won’t stop little comparisons and wondering. Last year the Hurricanes went bold by getting Jake Guentzel. Guentzel was great for them (36 total points in the 28 regular season games and playoff games he played in that jersey) but didn’t help them to the Stanley Cup. Carolina will try again with Mikko Rantanen, who is heading for his third straight 100+ point season and been Guentzel on steroids.
It was former Carolina GM Don Waddell who presided over the Guentzel deal last year, but this year’s Rantanen deal is similar. If Tulsky wasn’t helping last year, he certainly was observing and taking notes. Again, Carolina did not give up a first round pick. They included some futures, and this time flipped Martin Necas — a productive player but one they only bridged, and who didn’t seem likely to stay past 2026 anyways. Now the Hurricanes will have the inside track to sign Rantanen to a long-term deal. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but at worst they increased their chances to win the Stanley Cup this year and will have the salary cap space to gun for more in the future.
It is not be fair to say the Penguins should have any sort of regret over going in a different direction with their GM search, it wouldn’t change any of the decisions made and even though Tulsky has been impressive it’s still early to anoint him just yet. Yet, accepting that doesn’t stop the mind from wandering when Carolina goes out and makes a bold and aggressive play to improve themselves.
Let’s look at the standings as they sit this morning and swing across the division for some quick thoughts.
Washington — The Capitals lost 2-1 last night in Vancouver to end a six-game winning streak. They still have only allowed six total goals during their last seven games. It doesn’t get much better than this for results and performance, the question now might be how long can it be sustained? At this rate, inertia is looking like it will carry them to first place in at least the division and conference.
Carolina — A lot of observers are bashing Chicago for their part in the big COL/CAR Friday trade for not getting much in return, which, can’t dispute that. But why in the hell does Carolina want Taylor Hall in the first place, especially at full freight of a $6.0 million cap hit? (This tone might seem odd after the monologue at the top, I concede). Hall was only playing 15ish minutes on a bad Chicago team and has only scored nine goals in 46 games coming off ACL reconstruction last year. He’s drained all of the Hurricanes’ cap room. Maybe the move to a good team inspires him and he’s a great fit, but from the outside it appears to be an odd and significant bet. It’d be one thing to get him in March and get some other team to retain half his contract. There’s the Tyler Dellow/Edmonton-NJ connection in play and in tune with the situation, so I guess we’ll see, but that part of the deal struck me as odd but in different ways than most took it.
New Jersey — The Devils may have dodged a major bullet when injured goalie Jacob Markstrom’s injury came back with only a 4-6 week timeline. (Not terrible timing either with the 4 Nations coming up). If that was an even more significant injury, it would have presented a correlating amount of trouble for their end of season journey.
Columbus — More unfortunate injury news comes from Columbus, Sean Monahan got hurt in a game against the Penguins on January 7th and it was announced will be missing 6-8 weeks from now. Dammit, CBJ, wasn’t supposed to go like this.. The Blue Jackets went 2-2-0 this week, losing to NYI and Carolina but beating Toronto and then pulling out a win in OT against the Kings yesterday. They’ll have to hang tough because someone is right on their tail and catching up fast...
NY Rangers — And it’s the Rangers, a 2-0-1 week adds to their momentum. They haven’t lost in regulation since January 4th and appear to be back from being written off in last place at one point. They have a tough week ahead (games against Colorado, Carolina and @Boston) so hopefully that goes to cool them off a little ahead of the tournament break. But for all the extremes this team has been through, it’s impressive that they’ve been able to rally almost all the way back after they were the hottest of messes only a handful of weeks ago.
Philadelphia — Yawn, 1-2-0 week for the Flyers, who beat the Red Wings (in OT) but then got hammered 6-1 by the Rangers and fell to the Islanders. Their biggest sin is they are boring. They’re not good, not bad, just kinda there as a generic opponent for teams. They’re not rough, not tough, just as bland as it comes these days.
NY Islanders — Four straight wins for the Islanders, which included three this week all over divisional foes (Blue Jackets, Flyers and an OT victory over Carolina yesterday). NYI got some bad news about Noah Dobson (out week-to-week, leg injury) and upped the ante by bringing in Tony DeAngelo for the rest of the season. Puts them a notch above the PA teams for keeping it spicy.
Pittsburgh — A lot of what is said above for the rival Flyers is sadly fitting for the team in the western side of the commonwealth too, if we’re being honest. The Penguins aren’t good, they break down and play sloppy too often. The game in Anaheim was a disaster but lately even though they’re losing frequently these days, it’s not as dreadful and embarrassing as it was when they were getting laughed out of the rink in the early parts of the season. Progress? Small atonement.