Carolina Hurricanes: Revisiting the Full Eric Staal Trade Tree

Chicago Involved Again

In what was another deal with Chicago, their fingerprints are all over this trade tree, the Hurricanes sent AHL defenseman Dennis Robertson, recently drafted D-man Jake Massie and a 2017 fifth rounder to the Hawks in exchange for a 2017 third rounder and forwards Kris Versteeg and Joakim Nordstrom.

While Nordstorm would spend three full seasons with the Hurricanes before signing with Boston as an UFA, Versteeg’s time was much shorter. He would only play in 63 games with Carolina, the veteran winger was traded to the LA Kings in February 2016 for Valentin Zykov and a conditional pick (the conditions were not met).

Like Saarela, Zykov was thought to be a key piece for the Hurricanes’ future. Both wingers saw limited NHL action with Carolina before being on the move again. While Saarela was eventually traded, will get back to this at little later on, Zykov would be placed on waivers in November of last year.

Getting claimed by Edmonton, Zykov would quickly fall out of favor with the Oilers’ brass in his limited showing before getting placed back on waivers only a mer month later, claimed this time by Vegas.

Although Zykov’s movement currently ends here, the trade tree is far from over. The third round pick returned to Chicago in the Teravainen deal would once again change hands in February 2017, this time to Detroit. With the Blackhawks desperate for help upfront they picked up a reclamation project in Tomas Jurco, in exchange for their reacquired third round pick.

While Jurco was just ok at best for the Hawks, he did end up finding his way into the Hurricanes organization via the Florida Panthers AHL team just this past season.

In a deal that was geared to solidifying the Charlotte Checkers as the Calder Cup favorites, they sent disappointing prospect Cliff Pu to the Panthers in exchange for “future considerations” in turn Jurco would join the Checkers from the Springfield Thunderbirds, Florida’s AHL affiliate.

While we could take this time to connect the Skinner deal, since Pu was involved, we’ll just get back to the matter at hand, the 2017 third round pick constantly on the move. With Detroit now ahold of the pick they would select goaltender Keith Petruzzelli, ending this branch of the Staal trade tree for now.

While Dennis Robertson was included in the first Chicago trade, his time with the Hawks organization would be cut short. Returning to the Hurricanes, or more specifically the Checkers, just a few months after being traded in exchange for Carolina’s third net minder, Charlotte’s starter at the time, Drew Maclntyre.

The last piece sent to the Blackhawks in the Verteeg/Nordstrom deal was the 2017 fifth round pick. It was durning the draft itself that this pick would once again change hands. The Hawks sent the pick (135th overall) and an additional pick (181st overall) to Vancouver in exchange for an earlier selection (112th overall).

To connect the dots and make some sense out of all of this, Vancouver selected defenseman Kristoffer Gunnarsson with the pick that originally belonged to Carolina, in turn finishing off another branch of the Staal trade tree.