Three Low-Cost Trade Deadline Targets For The Hurricanes

The Carolina Hurricanes are one of the teams gaining a lot of attention in regards to the upcoming NHL trade deadline. This boils down to the fact that the Hurricanes are classified as a “buyer” universally. Being a buyer at the trade deadline means that the Hurricanes are expected to make some moves on March 21st (or before) in order to improve their chances at a Stanley Cup.

The Canes currently sit atop the Eastern Conference in both points, with 87, and points percentage with a points percentage rate of .737. Through 59 games Carolina has a record of 41-13-5, good for second in the entire NHL. Carolina is 7-2-1 in their last 10 games and boasts a goal differential of +59. The Canes have the best penalty kill in the league with a success rate of 89.4, and a top 5 powerplay with a success rate of 24.9%. Yeah, not too bad, huh?

Many people though, especially in the Raleigh-Durham area, feel like the Canes could still improve. Many look at the offense as a weakness of the Canes, despite going 4-1 in their last 5 games, the Canes did not score more than 3 times in any of them, and a lot of those games involved an empty-net tally for the team in red.

Other fans have looked at the defense, can the largely inconsistent play of the third pair balance itself out, or should the Hurricanes look externally for help on the back-end? It’s hard to question the situation in the net, Frederik Andersen is on pace to be a Vezina candidate and Antti Raanta has played phenomenally as of late, some wonder if maybe acquiring a third-string goalie would be smart just in case Andersen’s injury proves to be worse than initially thought.

As it stands now, the Hurricanes only have $1,792,500 at their disposal for deadline day, according to CapFriendly. That is a major limitation as they do not have a lot of room under the cap, like many contenders in the league. In a recent interview with NHL.com, Canes GM Don Waddell made it incredibly clear that he isn’t looking to change the dynamic of the team.

In the aforementioned interview, Waddell went on to say “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.” He went on to say that he may look at supplementing the defense for the right price but that was about it on the trade front.

For the most part, Carolina has been a very quiet team at the deadline, like last year when the only trade made was swapping third-pair defensemen, bringing in Jani Hakanpaa. In 2020 Waddell’s hand was forced after a slew of injuries led to the busiest trade deadline in Hurricanes history.

For those expecting a big splash from the Hurricanes, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The Canes have limited cap space, the front office does not want to mess with the roster too much, and the team has been more than happy standing pat in the past. However, a move is still very much possible, in this article we are going to explore the possibility of trading for three players that not only should fit underneath the cap, but also won’t cost the team too much in terms of assets.

Think of these as more boring, but also, more realistic trade targets. I do not think that any of these should be the ONLY move the Canes make on trade deadline day, but a little bit of added depth wouldn’t hurt the team.