Is Carolina Ready To Make Another Bad Deal?

Anybody catch Carolina sending Jeff Skinner to Buffalo last week?

As an Oilers fan, you’re probably used to seeing your fair share of horrible trades. I’m not here to revisit them individually, but I am here for pointing out a bad one on another club. Like this one right here? It’s bad. The Hurricanes traded Jeff Skinner to the Buffalo Sabres for three lottery tickets and Cliff Pu. Obviously the Hurricanes didn’t plan on offering a new deal to Skinner (he’s got one year remaining), but giving him up for a mid-level prospect and three draft picks that aren’t first rounders? Jeff Skinner could score 30 goals playing alongside Jack Eichel this year. That’s not a bad deal for the Sabres.

I wrote about how volatile the Hurricanes could potentially be back in May. They’ve just undergone a full-scale changeover from team ownership (Dundon) to management (Waddell) down to the head coach (Rod Brind’Amour). It took a couple of months, but they’ve traded one of their best players for three lotto tickets and a B prospect. To make a long story short, I don’t think they’re done yet. And to revive my feeling in May, the Oilers should call up Don Waddell to see what’s going on.

DUNDON WANTS TO MAKE TEAM DECISIONS

It’s not often that an owner gets up to the microphone and says that he wants to be in on the day-to-day running of a sports team. Yeah, no thanks. That’s a big red flag if I’m a fan of this club.

WHO’ S RUNNING THE SHIP?

Don Waddell is the GM. I’ve got a blinking bat-signal that displays the Atlanta Thrashers logo in my head when I think of Don Waddell. You’ll recall Waddell as the man who shipped Ilya Kovalchuk to the Devils for Johnny Oduya and parts. I’m not suggesting that every Waddell trade is going to be a zero, though his most famous part of his work history (“Being Thrashers GM”) would suggest it was his least efficient.

CAP CONSTRAINTS

A dream scenario would be for the Oilers to convince Milan Lucic to waive his NMC for the sunny skies of Raleigh. I’m not sure that’s a feasible thought, but there was plenty of talk about it in the last month. There’s also been significant talk that Lucic is ready to come in, work hard, and help everyone forget his 2017-18 campaign. While I’ve got no doubt that the latter part of that last sentence is true, the Oilers would do themselves a great service by freeing up Lucic’s six million in cap. Heck, maybe they sign Darnell Nurse to a long term deal with cap space that could be saved by moving six million a year for the next five years.

The Hurricanes have a wad of cap space and just shipped one of their best players for some peanuts. Surely they’re very interested in replacing him with a power forward who brings all sorts of intangibles to the table for the next five years. It’s worth a phone call.