Time for a Trade in Carolina?

The current state of the Hurricanes is amazingly up and down. October brought injuries and losses, but November has the Canes on an upswing. Where do we go from here?

During October, the team performed worse than expected, even with the major injury to Jordan Staal before the season even started. Eric Staal went down with an upper body injury and our best scorer, Jeff Skinner, took on another concussion. The injuries to Nathan Gerbe and Patrick Dwyer just made things worse. So, we had to fill these spots with AHL players and rookies. And we played like it. A month of zero wins put Canes fans in a very pessimistic mood. Would we ever win a game?

Yes! November came along and brought with it the feeling of victory (and an unnamed fireman’s helmet award). This upswing is partly due to the return of E. Staal, Skinner, Gerbe, and Dwyer. But, the play of young contributors Victor Rask, Elias Lindholm, and Riley Nash really supported the overall team effort. One would also think that Bill Peters’ decision to bench Alexander Semin for two games might have also reset team morale and sent a message to the underperforming Russian. Cam Ward’s pseudo-resurgence also gives fans hope (there’s no telling how long this hot streak will last, but let’s enjoy it while we can!).

That little introduction leads me to my next question. Should Carolina still make a trade? During our losing streak, many writers and fans were calling for a trade or two (even a fire sale in a few cases). We could free up cap space and bring in new talent to bolster the future of the team. Names like Eric Staal, Jiri Tlusty, and Andrej Sekera came up as assets the Canes could trade away. Staal is aging and his performance has dwindled over the past couple of years, but he has stepped it up as of late. He is playing like a two-way first-line center. Tlusty has somewhat regained his scoring touch, but he is a pending UFA after his contract runs out this year. He could be a decent rental player for a contender and could garner a good return. Sekera is a top-pair defender for the Canes and has really showed his value since we signed him last season. Once again, this pending UFA could want a larger contract next year and we might not be able to resign him with our cap issues. He would most certainly garner a very good return from a contender. But do we do any of these? At this point, I still think a trade would help the Canes. I’d personally like to resign Sekera, but that could make Tlusty and his contract the odd man out. Tlusty would most likely bring back a draft pick (3^rd or later) and a bottom six player or bottom four defender. I would also not be against trading the likes of Jay Harrison and/or Patrick Dwyer. Harrison is regressing as a defender and Dwyer isn’t adding enough to the team in terms of scoring output. Granted, Dwyer is used predominately as a penalty-killer and a third-liner, but I feel like there is someone out there that could add a little more to the team as a whole. Both Harrison and Dwyer would not bring too much back in terms of picks and/or players, so adding one or both to another player trade might be the route to go.