Carolina Hurricanes Shouldn’t Trade for James Wisniewski’s Replacement
By Brett Finger
The Carolina Hurricanes need to think twice before attempting to trade for a replacement for defenseman James Wisniewski.
The James Wisniewski era in Carolina got off to a disappointing start on Thursday as the veteran blue liner went down with a potentially season-ending left ACL tear.
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Wisniewski was placed on IR on Saturday and is set to undergo surgery to reconstruct his ACL on Tuesday in Raleigh.
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Since the top-four blue liner has gone down with injury, Hurricanes general manager Ron Francis has said that the team may look to replace him via free agency or trades. This should not be the way that the club goes about it.
This is the worst time of year for a big injury to happen. Every team across the NHL has finalized their rosters and sent players they don’t want through waivers, and they have since cleared waivers. The only defenseman that the Carolina Hurricanes would actually get in a trade would be players that are overpaid and unwanted by their current team.
Take Andrew MacDonald for example in Philadelphia. MacDonald is a year removed from signing a six-year, $30 million contract with the Flyers, but he was passed through waivers at the end of training camp and is now in the AHL.
Without the steep price tag, MacDonald is a player that could fill a top-six role in Carolina and could potentially be a viable replacement for James Wisniewski, but his ludicrous salary and term makes him more of a liability than asset for his team.
No teams in the league are looking to trade away good value defensemen because it is still the opening week of the season. Technically, every team is in playoff contention right now, and no one will trade away good players this early in the year.
Carolina Hurricanes
That means that the remaining options are free agents, the waiver wire, and solving the problem in house.
The free agent market is pretty dry with it being the early stages of the regular season. Names like Tim Gleason and Anton Volchenkov are both still on the market, but neither of them are very palatable options.
Low-grade defenseman will likely keep hitting waivers over the next few weeks, but like the remaining free agents, these players aren’t going to be highly sought after and will likely just provide the exact same thing that in-house options will.
That leaves me to the in-house options, which is likely the best solution to the problem. Michal Jordan stepped in and played a fine game against the Red Wings on Saturday in a bottom-pairing role, but that means that a bottom pairing blue liner needs to step up and play more significant minutes, and that is where rookie Noah Hanifin comes into play.
Hanifin has been outstanding in a sheltered third-pairing role alongside Ryan Murphy through the first two games, and with the injury to Wisniewski, his ice time will likely steadily increase over the next few games, and the same will likely apply to Murphy.
Michal Jordan will be a solid bottom pairing option, which will make way for younger blue liners like Hanifin and Murphy to become a bigger factor in the club’s defense.
It is still very early in the season, but big questions have already presented themselves, and Ron Francis and the Carolina Hurricanes coaching staff will need to find answers very quickly.