While I'm sure he didn't mean anything negative with what he said, Steve Levy's call of the series-winning goal during the 2002 Eastern Conference Finals felt a little harsh. While Raleigh was far from a hockey city at the beginning of the 2000s, the Hurricanes were a good team, though I'm sure not many expected them to advance to the 2002 Stanley Cup Final.
Last week, we talked a little about the player who set up the overtime winner against Toronto, but what of the man who scored the goal? For that, we have to travel back to 1998 and the inaugural season for the Carolina Hurricanes.
This trade with the Vancouver Canucks was not one between teams vying for a playoff spot. The Hurricanes were stuck near the bottom of the Northeast Division, while the Canucks were dead last in the Pacific, battling Tampa Bay for the worst record in the league. It felt more like a reset for some of the players involved.
The swap featured five players, with three heading to Vancouver and two returning to Greensboro. The Canes sent forward Geoff Sanderson, defenseman Enrico Ciccone, and goalie Sean Burke to the Canucks for forward Martin Gelinas and goalie Kirk McLean.
Almost everyone was traded again before the 1998 trade deadline
At just 25 years old, Geoff Sanderson was already one of the most prolific scorers in the organization's history. At the time of the trade, Sanderson had scored the fourth most goals (196), and he's still in the Top 10 today. Sanderson only played nine games with Vancouver, being traded to Buffalo a month later. He finished his 17-year career with 355 goals and 700 points in 1,104 games.
Enrico Ciccone was little more than a big-bodied enforcer on the back end. Ciccone, whom the Hurricanes acquired the previous July, only played 14 games with the team before the trade. The Canucks sent him to Tampa Bay two months later for his second stint with the Bolts. He had over 1,400 penalty minutes in his career, scoring just 28 points.
Sean Burke had been with the organization for six years, doing fine work despite a losing record as a Whaler. His numbers in 1997-98 weren't pretty, leading to the change in the net. Unfortunately, Burke's numbers only got worse once he landed in Vancouver. The Canucks shipped him to Philadelphia in March for Garth Snow, continuing the goaltending carousel.
Getting a goalie in the deal as well, the Canes didn't keep Kirk McLean around long enough to make much of an impact. McLean played eight games for Carolina, winning four of them, but his other numbers weren't good. The Canes traded him to Florida in late March for Ray Sheppard, a move that proved fruitful when the team made the postseason for the first time since relocation in 1999.
Gelinas stuck around to score an iconic goal in franchise history
With the other four players traded before the end of the season, Martin Gelinas was that only player who made a lasting impact with his new team. In his late 20s, Gelinas was coming off a pair of 30-goal seasons with Vancouver, but he'd been limited to just eight points in 24 games after missing a month with a sprained knee.
He made an immediate impression with a goal and an assist in his Hurricanes debut on January 5th against Ottawa. Gelinas finished the season with 12 goals and 26 points in 40 games with the Canes, but his numbers over the next two seasons were nearly identical to that line in nearly double the number of games.
The 2000-01 season was the outlier of his Hurricanes tenure. It was the only season that he topped 20 goals, finishing the campaign with 23 goals and 52 points. He was back below 30 points in 2001-02, but no one remembers any of that because of the goal he scored in late May to eliminate the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Gelinas had played okay during the playoffs. He had four points through two rounds, doing all of his scoring in Game 5 wins over New Jersey and Montreal. He added an assist in Game 2 against Toronto in what became a very low-scoring series. In one of his last games with the Hurricanes, Gelinas scored the biggest goal in franchise history.
Just over eight minutes into overtime, after Toronto kept its season alive with a late third-period tally, Gelinas was cruising to the top of the crease. Josef Vasicek put the pass perfectly on his tape for a redirection, beating Curtis Joseph and allowing Levy to utter his now iconic words. It was both strange and true, but the Carolina Hurricanes were heading to the Stanley Cup Final.
This was a very weird trade overall. It's likely one of the crazier trade trees in franchise history, and I might look to explore that one day. While most of the players involved didn't leave much of a mark, it led to one of the biggest moments in the team's history. Gelinas might've never been a superstar, though that hardly matters when you score a goal like that.