Hurricanes Continue To Look At Defensemen Ahead Of Trade Deadline

The Carolina Hurricanes are in a very interesting predicament ahead of the March 21st trade deadline. They are one of the elite teams in the league and are atop the Eastern Conference in both points and points percentage. Unlike other contenders though, they aren’t as interested in getting reinforcements at the deadline.

In a recent interview with NHL.com, Hurricanes GM Waddell was quoted saying “We like our team. We don’t really want to trade anybody off our team. Saying that, if there was a deal that made a lot of sense, we’d have to talk about it. But we don’t have a lot of cap space.” While this may be a front, Waddell being open about his deadline strategy more than likely reflects how they see the roster, they really don’t want to change too much, and who can blame them?

Despite Waddell’s claims, the Canes front office is still looking. They have been linked all season to Dallas defenseman John Klingberg, even before injuries hit the Canes’ blueline. Arizona Coyotes star defenseman Jakob Chychrun also caught the eye of the Hurricanes as they are rumored to be one of the teams gunning for his services.

It was reported earlier in the week that the Canes had checked in on then-Ducks defenseman Josh Manson, but the asking price for Manson was too high for Waddell and co. The biggest problem the Canes faced with potentially trading for Manson was that they did not have enough cap space to do it without using a “broker team”, even if Anaheim retained fifty percent.

Josh Manson was traded to Colorado on Monday night for a 2023 second-round pick and a prospect, with Anaheim retaining fifty percent of Josh’s $4.1 million cap hit. While that doesn’t seem like a crazy high demand, it was evident the Hurricanes did not want to pay that along with whatever they would have to give up for a broker team to eat more salary.

According to CapFriendly the Hurricanes have $1,792,500 in cap space for deadline day, which is not a lot. The Hurricanes’ front office isn’t dumb, they know they will not be able to trade for a star player with a big cap hit, but they are still doing their due diligence and discussing the possibilities with teams. In the aforementioned interview with NHL.com, Waddell discussed wanting to bolster the defense, and the players they are checking in on reflects that.

It is hard to predict what the Hurricanes will do at the trade deadline, if anything at all, but even if the front office is comfortable with what they have right now that doesn’t mean they’re going to stop looking. If the Hurricanes do decide to make a trade, it’ll most likely be for a player with a very low cap hit similar to the Jani Hakanpaa acquisition at last year’s deadline. Just because the team is leaning towards standing pat, it is not out of laziness, the Hurricanes are doing their homework on players around the league.

Question for Cardiac Cane readers: What moves do you want the Hurricanes to make at the trade deadline?