After another season of failure, the Carolina Hurricanes have officially begun their full-scale reboot. Just a month ago, their head coach, Bill Peters, stepped down as the Canes head coach and was seeking new opportunities. Just 3 days later, Peters signed with the Calgary Flames. Even earlier in the season the Hurricanes removed Ron Francis as their General Manager. Give it a month and Carolina would eventually name Rod Brind’Amour as the new head coach and Don Waddell as the new GM. With this new management, changes are sure to arise.
Around mid-May, per hockey analyst Bob McKenzie, he has reported that the Hurricanes are open to dealing anyone who isn’t named Sebastian Aho, the Hurricanes star young-gun. This includes star players like Jeff Skinner, who scored 24 goals, 25 assists, and 49 points this last season, Justin Faulk, the Hurricanes best defenseman, Victor Rask, a centerman and even young-winger Teuvo Teravainen who had a breakout year in Carolina with 23 goals, 41 assists and a total of 64 points on the year, the most he has had in his 5-year NHL career. Many teams would love to take advantage of this opportunity to acquire some of these players, but who stands out as the top go-getters?
To start the Arizona Coyotes, who are in dire need of a scoring winger in the desert. After finding an impressive first line in Richard Panik, Derek Stepan, and Clayton Keller, the Coyotes are sure to take advantage of this opportunity to possibly get somebody like Jeff Skinner or Teuvo Teravainen. The Coyotes already made a deal with the Canes a few weeks ago sending Jordan Martinook and a 2018 4th round pick to Carolina in exchange for Marcus Kruger and a 2018 3rd round pick. Both players are statistically equal so this was a fairly balanced trade, but whether or not Kruger stays with the team this season or is used a trade piece is unknown. General Manager John Chayka always seems to surprise on draft day. Regardless, Skinner would be a great addition and could possibly be that scoring winger they’ve been looking for. They might also be interested in Victor Rask as the Coyotes need another centerman, as current centerman Brad Richardson, is rumored to possibly not resign with the team.
Next, the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings had a great bounce back season by getting back into the playoffs after missing them last season, but going against the Pacific’s best team, the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round, proved that they weren’t ready one bit, in the entire first round, the Kings scored only 3 goals in the span of the 4 games they played before getting swept and getting shutout twice, so clearly, the Kings need to re-evaluate their roster and add some more scoring players.
The St. Louis Blues are next on this list. After an impressive start to the season, the Blues just seemed to have dropped off from that terrific start and ended up missing the playoffs. Many fans are putting Jake Allen in the spot light to blame as some sort of scapegoat, but could the Blues be in the searches for a new goal tender? After a horrid season last year, Scott Darling of the Hurricanes could be looking for a fresh start and the Blues just might be that team to take the chance on Darling. It wouldn’t be impossible for a goalie-for-a-goalie trade, along with a few other players or picks thrown in between, but this is just a theory. The Blues have found some scoring depth in Brayden Schenn as he had a breakout year with 28 goals, 42 assists and a total of 70 points on the year, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t further deepen that depth. They could possibly go after Teuvo Teravainen to add another young scoring winger, but, again, just a theory.
The Edmonton Oilers… The Oilers are a mystery in this league as one season, they had a breakout year, even winning the division and making it to the 2nd round of the playoffs, then the next, not even coming close to the playoffs. This shows that even though, you have Connor McDavid on your team, you are still vulnerable and beatable. The Oilers need some offense added to their team this summer and Carolina could provide. They could go after Skinner or Teravainen to enhance their offense a tad more, but they should really work on their defensive core. Adding someone like Justin Faulk, could help the Oilers out in this situation and possibly to their offense as well. Faulk is an offensive defenseman, but doesn’t score too often, but does have the ability to put the puck in the back of the net.
The New York Rangers, the Kings of New York were dethroned last season as they missed the playoffs in 2018. There were many contributing factors to this team’s failure of a season, things such as goal tending and lack of offense and defense, but nothing too glaring. In goal, with Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers are just going to have to accept the fact that he is getting old, so possibly going after Scott Darling is a theory. They Rangers did eventually bring up some young players like Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil, which is showing great signs that they are in a full rebuild state. After trading away veterans like J.T. Miller, Ryan McDonagh, Rick Nash, and others, the Rangers are now in the beginning stages of their rebuild, which would make sense that they would try and trade for another young asset like Teravainen or Skinner.
Whatever the case may be, the Hurricanes are sure to be getting a lot of calls this summer.
