The Carolina Hurricanes were one of the busier teams at this year's trade deadline, landing two high-ceiling forwards in Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov.
Following the passing of the deadline, Canes general manager Don Waddell spoke with the media about his deals. Here's what he had to say:
Opening Statement: Like the last three years, I'll start off by saying I really like our group, but I like it even better today. An exciting few days happened obviously with the picking up of Guentzel and Kuznetsov. We went into the trade deadline as we do every deadline, talking about how we can make our team better. As you know, we haven't been a big rental type of team. Kuznetsov obviously has another year left and Guentzel, we felt like the price that we were paying was worth the return. Right now, we felt like if we could add more goal scoring to our hockey club, that that would make the most sense. We were fortunate to land both players.
On the timeline for acquiring Guentzel: We started talking seriously on Wednesday morning. Made some calls. At that time, I had talked to [Penguins GM Kyle Dubas] multiple times over the last couple of weeks. He was waiting to see how his team did and he wanted to wait until the last week. So when I talked to him on Wednesday morning, he said that he was open to moving him. He asked what we would be interested in giving and that started the process. The process, really, went from Wednesday morning until obviously last night when we finally came to a deal.
On the team's management of assets contributing to their ability to acquire Guentzel: It's a big thing, managing your assets. I always said that you have to be careful with trading away futures, but if you go back a few years ago, we had multiple picks, I think we had 14 picks in the draft, and we made some great selections. Credit to [Hurricanes AGM and Director of Scouting] Darren Yorke and his staff. So we built up a stockpile of prospects and there's 'A' prospects and 'B' prospects, but we think we have about seven or eight of what I would call 'A' prospects, so when you start calling a team like in Kyle's situation, he was looking more so for players than he was picks. We all know with picks that you hit on some of them and you miss on a lot. With already having players established and some of them already playing pro hockey, you have a lot more sense of where the player is in their development. Kyle said right off the bat that his number one priority was making sure he got some good draft players and he also had expressed interest in [Michael] Bunting. He had him in junior hockey and with the Toronto Maple Leafs and he felt like he would be a good add for his team. So we started having pieces come together pretty quick, but like any general manager in the league when you're dealing with a marquee player like this, you're not taking your first offer or an offer quickly. You want to make sure you do what you need to do to get as much value as you can for the player. It took two days, there were multiple teams widely reported that were involved in it, so it takes a while to sort through all that.
On if there was any pressure to add due to other teams around the league stocking up: You pay attention to what's going around, but we all know that I can't control what other teams do. There's lots of players out there and you can't get them all. You pay attention to what teams are doing, but never in my whole career have I been reactive to what someone else did. I think there's been 14-16 first-round picks traded the last two years and if I remember correctly, only one team at the end of the year wins the Cup. That's why we've always been very protective of our first-round pick, but what happens around the league is fascinating, interesting, but doesn't reflect how we're going to make our next move.
On Evgeny Kuznetsov: I'll give credit to Justin Williams who played with him in Washington and had a good rapport with the player. We know how skilled he is. This year hasn't gone as well as his past years, but he got here in time today for practice and you could just see the skill level that he brings. We think that with the players we're going to surround him with, the coaching staff that we have here and not only a great culture but a great environment, that if anybody's going to have the chance to get him back to where he was — I mean his playoff numbers have been outstanding — and get him back to that level, that we felt very comfortable that we could be the team to do that.
On the vetting process for Kuznetsov: We did our due diligence like you'd expect. We spoke to doctors, we got permission to talk to the player himself, teammates, ex-coaches. I'm not sure if there's anything we didn't do to make sure that we had all the facts and could make an educated decision on if and how we wanted to move forward. Once we had all that information, we made the decision to go. I should also thank Tom [Dundon] because he's the one who puts the cash up. It's a lot of money that he puts up. Every trade you make and every move you make, there's always some risk and we feel like this was a good risk to take.
On the decision to move Michael Bunting: We play a different style and it took him a while to get used to that. I don't know if he ever got real comfortable with the style we play. He put up a lot of points for the minutes he was playing, so he's a great offensive player. He can pass the puck, shoot the puck, he scores in the dirty areas, so all those things were very good. Defensively, we play man-on-man and he struggled with that a little bit and we just felt that... we weren't looking to trade him, but when you're trying to get a player like Guentzel, when [Dubas] asked for him... and it also helped for the cap purposes too. We moved the same amount of money out as we brought in. That plays a factor in all these decisions.
On making sure Guentzel's injury wouldn't be an issue moving forward: We were allowed to have all his medical records and talk to their doctors. Our doctors look through the medical records and he's been back skating and started contact this week. So the same due diligence. Our doctors felt that he was well on his way to being healed. When you're talking about these oblique injuries, same thing [Andrei] Svechnikov had, you want to make sure... these games coming up are all important, but the important ones don't start for another month. So we're going to manage this correctly. We're fortunate that we have 14 forwards on our roster, so we have the flexibility to be patient and make sure that when we bring him back, that he's 100% ready.
On being comfortable with not targeting a goaltender at the deadline: If we were to go and get a goalie now, everybody would say, 'Why didn't you get one three months ago?' We felt comfortable even when Freddie [Andersen] went down with [Antti] Raanta and Pytor [Kochetkov] that they were going to carry us through. Then Kochetkov got hurt and we ended up picking up Spencer Martin and during that time I think Raanta played 10 or 11 straight games, something he's never done in his career, and I think he only lost one in regulation and one in overtime. Then we picked up Spencer Martin who was purely an insurance policy that I bought and then we threw him into an easy game in Boston and he won that game. Then his next start was in Vegas and he won that game. Came home finally and played at home and won that game. So we just got real comfortable. He's an unbelievable kid, well-liked by teammates and has worked his butt off everyday in practice. Second or third goalie like that, that's the one players practice their crossbar shots against and he handles it very well. We found out what he's all about and thought he's a guy that we want to keep around.
On the accountability of Kuznetsov: There's no denial or pointing fingers. He takes it all upon himself. He made a mistake here recently and he knows that this is potentially his last chance. Sometimes... we've all seen situations where it takes a pretty strong wakeup call. If I was a betting person right now... not allowed to gamble in the state until the 11th of March with Fanatics... good plug... I would say that with his attitude and his makeup right now, that coming here is really going to help him. I'm very positive that this is all going to work out for both of us.
On having him for an additional year: Next year he'll cost us $3.9 million of cap and cash. If you're giving that to a guy that's giving you 50-60+ points, that's pretty good money spent. We like the idea that he had the other year so that we get a jump start on this year, get him going and then we can look forward to having him on our roster for next season.
On why this year was the one to target a premium rental: We knew that we needed goal scoring. Guentzel was obviously the premier goal scorer on the market, in our opinion, and the price was right. We all view prospects... every organization is going to do prospects differently, but we think [Ville] Koivunen is a high-end prospect and we expect [Vasily] Ponomarev to play, as we've seen, in the NHL. But that goes back to what we talked about earlier. We have a big pool right now. They all can't play coming into the league at the same time. It's just impossible. So that's why we felt that we had the flexibility and the availability to put some of those guys in a deal. We pretty much stayed away from our first-round pick which we wanted to do. It's in there if we get to the Stanley Cup Final, which we haven't gotten to since '05-06 — which was a year I wasn't here — but we felt that going from a second to the first was well worth it. That was one of the holdups there. They wanted a first-round pick and we just didn't want to give it, but we found a way to bridge that gap. They for sure have Philadelphia's second-round pick and if we go to the Stanley Cup Final then that pick becomes our first and we keep Philadelphia's second. It's going to be 22-23 spots back, so we felt that was definitely worth the price we're paying to get a guy like Guentzel.
On if there were any discussions with Guentzel about a contract extension: Not at all. We'll wait until the summer. His agent, Ben Hankinson, I know very well. He's represented Jake for a long time. I kind of look at it like a two-way street. We'll get to know this player a lot better in this next, hopefully, three months, but he'll also get a good chance to find out what what we're all about. About Rod and his teammates. I wasn't stuck that we hadn't talked to him. We never asked for permission, so we never talked about an extension before we traded for him. We were comfortable with that.
On the message to the fanbase: Well, two days ago, they were trying to run me out of the city and now, I think it just shows... and this isn't Don Waddell, this is an organization that makes these decisions. Obviously somebody's gotta be accountable for them, but... and I want to be careful how I say this because the fans are tremendous here. We're on a sellout streak and all that. So I don't want to say that we don't do things to please the fans, but we want to do things that make our team better which then in return will make our fans even more proud to be Hurricanes fans. The moves we made, I've been hearing, are pretty positive in the community, which is good to hear, but now it's up to us on the ice to continue progressing. The best thing that we can do is win hockey games and continuing to win hockey games is what our fans want, what we all want. I can't say enough good things about our fans. Every team that comes in here and every general manager says to me, 'Wow, what a building you guys have going.' They've come in here over the years and I did too for many years as a visitor, where it was a little different. Now the place is loud every night. It's just a different atmosphere here and it's all because of our fans coming out and supporting this team. We're all in this thing together. We can't do it without them. So to keep them heading in the right direction and continuing supporting us, it's important that we can give some things back that they appreciate. Now we have to go and win some hockey games.
On how early the team keyed in on Kuznetsov: When he came off waivers on Monday, I called their general manager, Brian MacLellan, who's a really good man who does a good job there, and I said, 'What's your plans?' He said, 'Well we're talking right now and we're going to reassign him to Hershey because he hasn't played since January 27. Going to go let him play games.' And I said, 'Are you open to moving him?' And he said, 'Let me get back to you.' We talked later that day on Monday and he said, 'Yeah, we would.' and then we started a conversation on how we're going to put the deal together. Yesterday was a blur for me because of Guentzel. We had spoken a couple times in the day, but this morning I got on the phone early with him and said, 'We want to get this done,' and made the offer. He got back to me and we did the deal fairly quickly. Got the trade call done, sent the plane to Charlotte to go pick him up and got him back here for practice. It all worked out. So it really wasn't that long. Started Monday and finished it this morning.