On what seemed to be a normal Friday night in the hockey world, the Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche and Chicago Blackhawks finalized a three-team deal that sent one of the best players in the NHL to Raleigh. Right wing Mikko Rantanen and left wing Taylor Hall will join Carolina while centers Martin Necas and Jack Drury will head to Colorado and the Blackhawks gain back its own third-round draft pick.
“There’re not many trades in a year that are bigger than Mikko Rantanen changing teams,” said Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky in a press conference this afternoon.
Rantanen and Hall will join the Hurricanes lineup tonight when they take on the Islanders at 7:30 p.m.
Rantanen is a bonafide superstar. The six-foot-four Finn is sixth in the NHL with 64 points and is tied for seventh in goals and assists with 25 and 39, respectively. For a Stanley Cup contender like the Avalanche to move a player of Rantanen’s caliber caught the league’s insiders and fans by surprise. However, Tulsky revealed a deal had been in the works for quite some time.
“We’ve been floating concepts all the way back to the summer,” Tulsky said. “We’ve been trading serious offers for six or eight weeks now and have been really down to brass tacks grinding trying to finish it for about two weeks.”
Rumors were swirling around the Hurricanes that they were ‘ready to pounce’ to acquire a No. 2 center — more specifically Canucks centers J.T. Miller or Elias Pettersson. When the news broke that it was Rantanen making the move, it caught most off guard.
Rantanen has mostly played right wing alongside former Hart Memorial Trophy center Nathan MacKinnon but is dynamic enough to play either alongside center Sebastian Aho or center a line of his own.
“I’m going to defer to [head coach Rod Brind’Amour] on how he’s going to arrange his roster,” Tulsky said. “Mikko has shown that he can take faceoffs and he can play center. That gives Rod a lot of flexibility for how he wants to set things up, ultimately it’s up to him to figure out what he thinks is best on any given night.”
Although Rantanen is by far the most newsworthy piece coming to Raleigh, it shouldn’t overshadow what Hall can bring to the table. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 entry draft and Hart Memorial Trophy winner in 2018 — the league’s MVP award — brings a lot of offensive power.
“[Hall] was another player from early in the year that we had our eyes on as somebody who might be available at some point and might be an option to upgrade our skill level,” Tulsky said. “We had conversations with [Chicago] and they were not ready to move him early. Of course, they got to a point where they started to think about it and it was around the same time that this deal started to really get down to details, and so I started to think about ways to combine the two and make it work for both.”
What was two separate deals became one as the Blackhawks sent Hall and the rights to Nils Juntorp — a Swedish forward prospect. In return, Chicago got back their third-round pick from Carolina and retained half of Rantanen’s salary for the rest of the year.
So why did Colorado move such a highly skilled player while trying to compete for a championship?
At the end of this season, Rantanen is set to become an unrestricted free agent and reports were that he was looking to sign for an average annual value of $14 million. The team didn’t want to pay him an amount larger than their franchise center and captain, MacKinnon, but Rantanen’s team was deadset on $14 million so a deal was never brokered. Instead of losing him for nothing in the offseason, the team decided to move him now.
Last season, the Canes made a splash at the trade deadline to acquire center Jake Guentzel with the hopes of re-signing him in free agency, but the team failed to do so when he signed a long-term deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Canes probably don’t want to repeat history and fail to re-sign a big trade acquisition for the second offseason in a row. With the current salary cap projected to make a significant jump and the team freeing up some expensive roster space, Carolina has the cash to spend; but that also depends on what Rantanen wants. Tulsky said he wouldn’t expect him to sign away the next six to eight years of his life without knowing what he’s in for.
“Our goal is to make him want to be here and then offer him enough money where he doesn’t have to think twice about it,” Tulsky said. “Really, at this point, it’s more of a recruiting pitch than negotiation in my mind.”
To get players like Rantanen and Hall you have to be willing to give up some important pieces and the Hurricanes had to depart with some familiar names. Necas and Drury were the key figures going the other way. Also included was a 2025 second and 2026 fourth-round pick.
Necas and Drury have been in the Canes organization since they were drafted in the top two rounds back in 2017 and 2018, respectively. They were fan favorites and core parts of the locker room. But with both players having requested trades not too long ago and upcoming contract negotiations that would likely see one or both leave in the next two years, it made sense for Tulsky and the rest of management to move on.
“Ultimately I have to do what’s right for the team,” Tulsky said. “Fans, on the day the move happens, are going to have opinions and feelings about the players they’ve had and the players they’re getting, in the long run, their opinions will depend on the team’s success. … I know every player in that room was sad to lose those two guys and that’s hard, you have to consider that and you don’t do it lightly. When you have the chance to get a player who can come in and change your team, sometimes you have to do things that aren’t comfortable.”
Giving up no prospects or first-round picks, the Hurricanes protected its future and opted to move some current pieces instead. The Avalanche wanted more speed and a depth center who wins faceoffs and kills penalties. The Canes needed an elite scorer, especially come playoff time.
“Our core mantra as a franchise is we never want to miss an opportunity to make the team better,” Tulsky said. “If the packages of assets had looked different, we would have been happy to put two first-round picks in. But when we’re giving up two really fantastic players then we didn’t have to put as many futures into the deal. Honestly, I might have preferred it the other way, but Colorado is a contender too and they needed current pieces if they were giving up a player like Mikko.”
The Hurricanes have flipped the league on its head acquiring one of the league’s best, but only time will tell if this trade is as fruitful as it’s hyped up to be.
Rantanen and Hall will have a chance to make an early impact when the Hurricanes take on the Islanders tonight at 7:30 p.m.
