Could this be the year the Carolina Hurricanes actually make another first-round selection?
With the 30th overall pick in the draft, GM Don Waddell is excited about what he's seen from the 2023 class and he's keeping his options open — even if that means selecting a Russian player.
Waddell, who is entering his sixth season at Carolina's helm, spoke to The Hockey News about his draft strategy, trade chatter and why it was important to lock up Jordan Staal.
What are the team's overall impressions of this year's draft class?: I usually don’t say if it’s a good draft or bad draft because we’re never going to know for three, four years anyways. But the players that we’re talking about around that pick do excite us. So that’s probably a positive. That there’s a lot of players, and you don’t know who’s going to be available, but there’s enough guys around there that it sounds like we can potentially get a pretty good prospect that we hope becomes an NHL player.
What specific things are your scouts looking for in prospects when they're watching them?: The biggest things we always look for, like most teams talk about, is hockey sense, compete level, where they’re playing now, what’s their future going to be for the next two, three years and is that good for their development because every situation is different. We’re going to draft a player here in the next couple of days, but we don’t really get the player for a few years. They’ll be wherever they are. So the development part of the player is going to continue and there’s a little outside help from us in the summer and with our guys during the year, but a lot is also based on how a team, and in particular a league, how they develop players.
Is the team's draft philosophy more needs-based or best available?: Because of where we’re picking, it’s not going to be position specific because you could have a forward at 30 and let’s say you wanted to draft a defenseman, but your next defenseman on your list is 37. You’re not going to go by the 30th player just for a position at that point.
How does the team come up with their final ranked list?: You want crossover. You don’t just want one opinion. You’ve got 10 guys and you don’t just want one opinion on a player you’re going to draft. You want multiple opinions because we all judge players differently. So we always make sure, especially with all of our European guys, that they get to come to North America. We’re fortunate in that. We've actually been doing four days of meetings since Thursday here. There's so much good video on these players now. It's so much different than what it was even five, six years ago with all the new services that are out there to cover all these leagues. So if there’s any real question marks we just spend some time watching some video.
A lot has been made about Russian prospects and some of the presumed risks associated with them. Carolina didn't seem afraid of that last year and so is that still the same case now?: We’re open for the best players. Passport doesn’t really matter. Again, you’re going to draft a player from whatever country now and you’re not seeing that player for the next few years anyway and the world could be in a different spot than it is today. I think the most important thing is where you see the projection of that player. We don’t worry about passport as much as, ‘Is this player projected to be a top-six forward, bottom-six forward, top-four defenseman?,’ that type of thing.”
The Hurricanes haven't made a first-round selection since 2020. Does that add a little more pressure to actually make the selection this year rather than moving it again?: Even last year, we had two guys we really wanted and they were both there at 25 or 24. I don’t remember where we picked, but it was like three spots ahead of us and sure enough both guys went right in front of us and so we felt that by trading back and picking up another extra second-round pick, that the player that we were going to take at that spot, we’d still get early in the second round, which held true. The one thing we won’t do though is if there’s a player on our list that we really want, we’re not trading back, we’re going to take that player. We’ve got lots of picks, nine in this draft, so it’s not like we’re just looking for more picks, we’re looking to try and get the best players.”
Has there been any updates in regards to how you're going to handle prospects in the AHL without an affiliate?: We already have a couple of deals with NHL teams where we’ll put two or three players. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s the cards we were dealt this year, so we’re going to make the best of it and hopefully put ourselves in a position to be back with somebody for the start of next season.
How important was it to get the Jordan Staal extension done this early into the offseason?: We had been working on it since the season ended. Rick Curran, his agent, and I had had multiple discussions about term and things. Talking first about the term and then getting to the money part of it. Every negotiation takes time. People expect things to happen quickly, but every negotiation I’ve been involved with, with the exception of maybe some entry-level guys where it’s pretty cut and dry, they all take time. 100% we wanted to get this behind us, we wanted to get it done before we got to the draft and we did. Jordan’s happy, we’re happy. When both sides are happy, that’s when you’ve got a good deal.
How have your other contract extension negotiations been going?: We’ve got a few more free agents that we’re talking to right now for this year and we also started working on extensions. We have quite a few guys up next year, and so we’ve had some discussions, but there’s not a rush on those. We’ve got all summer. They don’t have to be done by the draft. They’re not hitting the free agent market. All those are going to take some time for sure and we’ll have the rest of summer, but we’ll be trying just so they don’t have to worry about it going through their last year. Going into the last year of your contract sometimes works, sometimes it doesn’t. Our goal is to try to keep the guys that we can, and the guys that we want, to try and keep them not just for next year, but the years after that as well.
It seems that the trade market has been a bit hotter recently than in previous years, has that been your impression too?: Definitely a lot more chatter. A lot of teams are trying to move money. With the salary cap only going up $1 million this year, I think some teams were hoping it was going to springboard more than that. Now we know that we’re locked in at $83.5 (million), so a lot of talk about contracts being moved around more or less for teams to create cap space.
Have you been involved in the chatter?: Oh yeah. My job as the general manager is to try to know who’s out there and who’s available. Staying in touch with teams. There’s definitely a lot of players being shopped right now.