After a season of great success, the Hurricanes are at a crossroads this summer. With the player that was the second-line center last year becoming a pending unrestricted free agent, decisions need to be made about the Hurricanes’ second-line center. There are thee in-house options and those are what are worth looking at as of right now because the free-agent market is completely unpredictable.
Carolina’s second-line center is going to be very important moving forward. They’re going to need to be able to play in all situations under pressure in the playoffs at the highest level and give the team a chance to win when the team needs them to in order to be successful in this setup for the long term. It is going to be a very important position for the future and the Canes will need to be committed to this decision.
Second-line centermen need to be able to produce and that is the Hurricanes’ major issue. I’m not saying that the Hurricanes have had any reason to not appreciate the production from this year’s forward group, but with a vital decision in the offing, there’s going to need to be a level of consistency about what you are getting. With the Hurricanes knowing that this is a big decision, there’s a lot to take from this.
I’m going to work on the assumption that Vincent Trocheck is not an option. We know how the Carolina Hurricanes organization has been under this ownership in terms of extending their players and we know that they do not like to open the checkbook for people, so I think it is pretty fair to assume that Trocheck has one foot out the door at this moment in time. This may change because hockey is insane, but at this moment in time, that is my assumption.