Day 1 of the 2025 NHL Draft came and went (it took much longer than anyone would have liked) and the Carolina Hurricanes only move of the evening was to move down the draft, trading their first-round selection for two second-round picks and a 2027 fifth-round pick.

Following the conclusion of the first-round, Carolina general manager Eric Tulsky spoke with the media gathered at the Hurricanes' war room at Lenovo's headquarters.

Here's what he had to say:

Eric Tulsky

On trading out of the first-round: We have several players we like in this part of the draft and we felt like we could slide down and still get one of the guys we're very high on and then have an extra pick to hopefully pick up another one of the guys we're looking at.

On if he felt there was a lack of trade chatter: My phone was lively. There was a lot of chatter about trades. I felt like there was a fair bit. I haven't compared it to past years yet, but it seemed like people were interested and open. One of the things about having the remote draft is communication is way easier. When you're in the in-person draft and the next team is three feet away, it's hard to communicate and it's hard to talk across the table. Here, we can really discuss our decisions and debate it and share information. It makes it easier to get some of that kind of stuff done, so I felt like there was a lot of chatter going on because of that ease of communication.

On the decentralized draft format: It makes it a lot easier to involve everyone in the conversations. When you do the draft in person, you have a big table with 15 people at it and three of them who are next to each other can communicate and talk and do everything and everyone else is just kind of sitting and watching. In this setting, we can talk across the room and we can get everyone involved and we can have the scouts see our process for working through our decision making and get trained so that they grow in their career and know how they could someday run a draft. I think it's very good for the team to be able to involve everyone and communicate. Obviously there's also the downside of not having the networking experience and the social activity. But in terms of actually running the draft, there's a real plus to it.

On if he was surprised by the lack of trades over the last few days: This year, it's been a difficult year to get some of these things done because almost every team in the league right now is looking to get better. Most years, you have a few teams who are deep into rebuilds or starting rebuilds and are willing to move some of their veterans for picks. This year, almost every team is saying that if they move a player, they want players back. That makes it hard to get deals done. If everyone's trying to add to their team... we can't all add. It's hard to do a trade where both sides add. I think that more than anything has slowed down the market right now. Just everybody is looking to do the same thing at once.

On the new CBA: It's great. It is very important to have the league continue smoothly from year to year without any interruption. It's really a testament to the league and the PA that they were able to sit down and get their issues on the table and iron it out without any disruption and do it in advance so that we all know what the rules are going to be and we can operate under them and not have any issues.

On when they made the decision to move back: Before the draft even started, I was talking to teams about if we were going to move back, here's what we'd be asking for. As we got closer, we sort of sorted through the teams that actually had a guy there that they wanted to move up and get and compare the offers and try to pick one.

On how confident he is that their guy will be there at 34: You can never know for sure, but we feel like we're in a good position to get two players who we really want out of those two picks.

On approaching free agency: There's a lot left to do still. I think we will have to see who hits the free agent market and what we can get done. We're also continuing to look at trades of course. I think one of the things we will see is that after July 1, teams will realize what they did or didn't get and there may be a secondary wave of movement there and there may be a tertiary wave of movement during the season because every team is trying to get better now and not all of them will. As we get halfway through the season, there may be players who become available then that aren't available right now.

On if he expects to sign any of the other upcoming UFAs before July 1: We're still working on it so it's hard to say right now. Hoping to get more done, but there's work to do still.

On any potential early RFA signings: I would say if we can get deals done early that both sides are happy with, we always want to do that. We don't really want to have uncertainty if we can help it. There are times when both sides kind of need to let it play out, but we're going to be talking to our guys and seeing what we can get done where we can.

On the team's draft strategy: It really has to be best player available. The players we're drafting are 18 years old. They're not going to be in the lineup for three or four or five years in most cases and we have no idea what our needs are going to be four years from now. You can wade a little bit toward where your prospect pool looks thinner or stronger, but for the most part, we just want to get the best players we can and if we have too many good players at one position, that's an easier problem to solve than not having enough good players.

On keeping the scouts involved in the process, especially when they trade down from higher draft positions: I think we work well with them so that they can understand the strategy and see that we, more often than not, have still been able to get the guys they wanted. They're always happy to have the opportunity to get more of the guys they wanted. Ultimately, they work all year to try and find players and of course you have a little bit of desire to get the players, but they're really here to win a championship. So it's really not about how many guys do I get to pick, it's about how close are we to winning a championship. 

On passing the time in what was a long draft process: I mean, we were following the draft, seeing who was getting taken, trying to predict who was going to be there for us. There was a little bit of trying to guess who was gonna get picked at each spot and ongoing conversations with teams about trades either up or down. Just following the draft along. Tomorrow will move a lot faster and there won't be a question about how you stay busy on Day 2. But on Day 1, there is a little time to sort of think through what's gone on and how you think about it.

On if the team ever considered moving up in the draft: We always look at it. I would say that the players who we would have considered moving up for went early enough that we probably didn't have a chance to move up for them. But there's always a set of players who, if this guy falls, we need to think about moving up to get him.

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