A long-rumored trade for the Carolina Hurricanes has been completed. General manager Don Waddell announced Thursday that the team has traded forward Jeff Skinner to the Buffalo Sabres for forward prospect Cliff Pu, a 2019 second-round pick, a 2019 third-round pick and a 2019 sixth-round pick.
In eight seasons with the Hurricanes, Skinner scored 204 goals and 379 points in 579 games. After scoring 31 goals and 63 points and winning the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year in 2010-11 after being picked seventh overall in the 2010 draft, Skinner’s second and third seasons were derailed by concussions before he settled in as the Canes’ best goal scorer, arguably one of the best in the league.
Skinner put up a career-high 37 goals in 2016-17 before a down year of 24 goals and 49 points last year. When new owner Tom Dundon and general manager Don Waddell promised sweeping changes to the Canes this offseason, Skinner, who will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2019, was one of the top names, along with defenseman Justin Faulk, to hit the rumor mill.
Waddell said the team did not have any discussions with Skinner about a contract extension; both sides were looking for a fresh start and the Canes started shopping for the best return.
“When you come to have extra draft picks in today’s day with the salary cap,” Waddell said. “If you have an opportunity to improve your team during the year, to have those extra picks is very important. We just made a decision early on that we would listen to people, and if there was a deal that made sense to us, we would make a decision and then move in that direction.”
Despite the loss of goal-scoring ability with Skinner, Waddell is confident in the team’s influx of young forwards, including No. 2 draft pick Andrei Svechnikov and top prospect Martin Necas, to fill the void.
“You’re always concerned about goals but I’m more worried about winning,” Waddell said. “With Necas coming over this year, getting the No. 2 pick probably gave us a little bit more of a surplus of young players with Svechnikov. We’ve also got a bunch of good young players in Charlotte that we feel like need an opportunity. The trade we made with Calgary, we picked up Micheal Ferland, who had 20 goals last year. Dougie Hamilton had 17.
“You need goals from a lot of different areas. If you’re just going to talk about one player with goal scoring, it might not be the best recipe to have success as a team. This isn’t about Jeff Skinner and us not winning, it’s about us feeling like it was time to make a change. We feel the pieces that we’ve added this offseason will make up for the goals and if we play better as a team defensively and all that, it all goes hand in hand.”
Waddell said that while the Canes were looking to change the culture after nine straight years of missing the playoffs, but weren’t going to make a change for change’s sake and take just any deal.
“I think we felt, culturally, that we needed to make some changes,” Waddell said. “Saying that, I always say that you don’t make a change just for the sake of making a change, because that usually doesn’t work out for you. When you make changes, they have to be in the mindset that you’re helping yourself moving forward.”
Skinner had a full no-move clause, and Buffalo was high on his list. Waddell said this was the longest he worked on trading one player in his career as a general manager, and the team was even looking at entering the season with Skinner on the roster, but the return from Buffalo was one they felt comfortable with.
Pu, the Sabres’ third-round pick at No. 69 overall in 2016, profiles as a potential scoring forward with some size at six-foot-two, 192 pounds. He put up 29 goals and 84 points in 65 total games with the London Knights and Kingston Frontenacs of the OHL last season.
Waddell said the team does not feel any pressure to make another move but Skinner’s absence opens a void in the team’s top-six forward group, and Faulk, who’s name is also still in the rumor mill, could be dealt, especially given Carolina’s depth on the blue line.
“We feel like we have a very high-end blueline with the guys that we have in place right now,” Waddell said. “That is not something that we feel necessarily that we have to make right now. Saying that, my job as a general manager is to listen. We get [calls on our] defensemen on a pretty regular basis. If there’s something there that we feel is going to make us better, we’re going to look at it. … I’m not actively shopping defenseman right now, but I am fielding calls, and if somebody makes an offer that we feel like, ‘Hey, this is going to make us better’, we will listen.”
