Carolina Hurricanes: Why Brett Pesce is irreplaceable

Brett Pesce is a key contributor on defense for the Carolina Hurricanes – but why do people keep linking him with a trade away from Raleigh? In every category conceivable, he is simply untradeable.

There are some players in the NHL, mostly defensemen, whose trade value is nowhere near their on-ice value to their team. Examples are players such as Chris Tanev of the Vancouver Canucks – an offense-starved shutdown defenseman – as well as others like Niklas Hjalmarsson, Dmitry Orlov and Marc-Edouard Vlasic. For the Carolina Hurricanes, no player has a higher on-ice-value-to-trade-value differential than Brett Pesce.

Recent media talk surrounding the Carolina Hurricanes has GM Don Waddell hawking the wares of both Pesce and Dougie Hamilton in an attempt to bolster the team’s forward ranks. Thing is, the team’s offense has been electric over the last 25 or so games, and has only gotten better with the arrival of Swiss sniper Nino Niederreiter.

So why on earth would the Carolina Hurricanes even consider trading a player so patently valuable to the cause?