Headed into the March 3 NHL trade deadline, the Carolina Hurricanes were poised to make a move with all the cap space available. With the unfortunate injury to Max Pacioretty, the team made available more than $10 million in cap space by moving him to the long-term injury reserve. Tom Dundon, the team’s owner, discussed their aggressive mindset with Frank Seravalli during an interview on Daily Faceoff. Dundon might be eating his words right now considering they were all but aggressive when it hit 3 p.m. on Friday.
The team lost out on its biggest target, Timo Meier, to a divisional opponent — the New Jersey Devils — instead of paying a high price for a different and pure goal scorer. Instead, the team decided to bolster the bottom parts of its lineup and keep the same core for the playoffs.
Hurricanes General Manager Don Waddell said Friday afternoon that the team was not going to pay a high price for rental players. The two moves the Hurricanes made were acquiring forward Jesse Puljujarvi and defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere for prospect Patrik Puistola and a third-round pick in 2026. Low risk, high reward.
Puljujarvi, who was acquired Tuesday before the deadline, was formerly selected fourth overall in the 2016 NHL Draft and has been a player Carolina has always had on its radar. He had a rough start in Edmonton and spent two years in the Finnish Liiga, then resigned with Edmonton prior to the 2020-21 season and most recently signed a $3 million, one-year contract last offseason to avoid arbitration. Puljujarvi played on the same line with fellow Finn forward Sebastian Aho at the 2016 World Junior Hockey Championships where the team took home the gold medal.
Carolina only had to part ways with its former 2019 third-round pick Puistola to acquire the 24-year-old right winger who struggled to find his game in Edmonton. In 317 games, Puljujarvi had 51 goals and 112 points with his former team.
The team will likely start the former first-round pick on the fourth line and see if he can find his game under head coach Rod Brind’Amour’s aggressive forechecking play. It could very well be a possibility that the Finnish native could work his way up to play with former juniors linemate Aho to see if they still have the chemistry from 2016.
The team’s next and final deal came Wednesday where they gave up a third-round draft pick in 2026 to bring in Gostisbehere from Arizona. This addition meant depth on the blue line and a change to a struggling power play.
The 29-year-old left-handed defenseman had 10 goals and 21 assists in 52 games with a subpar Coyotes team this season. This addition has already proved to be great for the team’s blue line and power play.
Gostisbehere went onto walk across the locker room Friday night at Mullet Arena in Arizona and played his first game in a Carolina sweater against his former team. Gostisbehere added a spark to the second power-play unit and even scored a goal against his former team in a 6-1 win. More recently, in a dominating 6-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, he continued his power-play goal streak and scored another goal in the second period Sunday evening.
Since acquiring Gostisbehere, Carolina’s power play went seven for nine in two games, and Ghost, as they call him for short, has two goals and two assists on the power play in those two games. The blue liner told reporters Friday prior to the game in Arizona that he was excited and thankful for the opportunity to go from a bottom of the league team to a top of the league team.
This will be a trade deadline many will look back on depending on how the rest of the season goes for the team. Anything other than a Stanley Cup back in Raleigh is a disappointing season. Will keeping the core group together and not making a splash pay off for Waddell and company? Only time will tell.
