Arya News - The Carolina Hurricanes had an eventful trade deadline today, moving out Mikko Rantanen and acquiring both Logan Stankoven and Mark Jankowski.
Jan 30, 2025; Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Carolina Hurricanes right wing Mikko Rantanen (96) celebrates their victory against the Chicago Blackhawks at Lenovo Center. (James Guillory-Imagn Images)
The Carolina Hurricanes had an eventful trade deadline today, moving out Mikko Rantanen and acquiring both Logan Stankoven and Mark Jankowski.
After the deadline passed, Carolina general manager Eric Tulsky spoke with the media in Raleigh. Here"s what he had to say:
Opening Statement : Look, our organization is characterized by an aggressive approach. Our forecheck tries to put pressure on, our defensive coverage tries to be aggressive. On and off the ice, we want to be aggressive whenever we can. And being aggressive means taking some risks. It means taking some chances. If you only make moves when you"re 100% sure you know exactly how it"s going to work out. You"re going to miss some opportunities to make the team better. That"s not what we want to do. If the team was already winning Cup after Cup after Cup, maybe that would be a time to be conservative, but we haven"t gotten where we want to be yet, hence we need to keep taking chances and trying to push things forward. Ultimately, that means taking some risks. When you"re bringing in a player like Mikko, the upside of having it work out long-term is worth that risk, in my mind. Obviously we didn"t want it to end with him being traded away. That wasn"t the goal, but that trade allowed us to bring in other pieces that will help us. It brings in a player who is going to be a long-term fit for us, who plays like he was born to be a Carolina Hurricane and brings in a lot of draft capital to keep us reloading the team going forward. Ultimately that fits with how we want to run this organization and we"re comfortable with the way it ended.
On if he felt the team could have still kept Mikko Rantanen given all the noise over the last 36 hours : Yes, absolutely. He"s a very good player and having him with the team would have been a perfectly fine outcome. Having him for a Cup run would have been good. Maybe we win the Cup with him. But we had to weight that against what we could get for him in a trade and if the trade offers hadn"t been there, then we wouldn"t have done that, but you have to balance it. Of course, when you move him out, that"s a loss for the current year. But if you bring in assets that helps the team going forward and we bring in a player in Logan [Stankoven] who we think is going to be a really good fit for us right away and is young enough that he"s going to keep getting better and better, we felt like we were getting enough in this deal that it was the right thing for the organization long-term.
On what he felt like was the biggest hurdle with extending Rantanen : It"s hard for me to say because I don"t want to speak for the player, but my sense of it from where I was sitting, was that this just didn"t feel like home to him. Everybody has their own personal needs and again, I think we have a great organization, I think we have a great coach, I think we have a great locker room, but it doesn"t fit for everyone and it just didn"t feel like home to him as far as I can tell and that"s okay. That"s a person"s life and he"s making an eight-year commitment and if it doesn"t feel like the right place for him, then that"s okay.
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Carolina Hurricanes To Trade Mikko Rantanen To Dallas Stars
Carolina Hurricanes To Trade Mikko Rantanen To Dallas Stars UPDATE (12:30 p.m. March 7) Per Elliotte Friedman, Mikko Rantanen has agreed to an eight-year, $12 million AAV contract extension with the Dallas Stars paving the way for him to be traded.
On if he felt that there was a bigger assurance given to the team than there actually was : Look, we knew it was a risk. The upside, if he did sign, was big. It"s hard to acquire players like this and when you do, if you get them locked up long-term, it"s a big value to the franchise and that looked like it was worth chasing and it helps that even in the downside where he decided not to sign, we were able to pivot and trade him and bring in a player like Logan, who I think is going to be great for us, and a lot of draft capital. And honestly, when you look back at the whole thing, we recovered a lot there and I"m pretty happy with where we ended up in the end. I know it"s disappointing on the day you trade away the player, but in total, between bringing in Taylor, bringing in Logan and getting two first-round picks, two third-round picks, we got a lot of assets here.
On the perception that that team can"t retain high-end talent : First of all, I"m going to stick up for my players a little bit. Jaccob [Slavin"s] a very high-end player, Sebastian [Aho"s] a very high-end player. We"ve got a lot of high-end players who signed here long-term. We just happened to have two recent ones that we brought in that didn"t work out and I don"t want to overgeneralize. We have plenty of high-end players who this does feel like home to. The two situations are also different. I understand why they get connected, because they were both mid-season trades that didn"t end up long-term, but my perception with Jake [Guentzel] was that he came in and it did feel like home to him, as far as I could tell and again, I hate speaking for the player, but it looked like a fit to me as far as I knew he was happy. We were just in a cap crunch. He is a very good player who earned a very nice payday and we were in a position where it was hard to make that commitment with our roster because there was so many unknowns going into last summer and so many people hitting free agency and it just ended up not working out because by the time we knew what we had to spend, it was too late. This year"s different. This year we have plenty of money, and money was never going to be an issue. The issue is just that it didn"t feel like home to him.
On Logan Stankoven : He is a really aggressive player. When the puck"s on his stick, he"s very shifty with it, he"s very aggressive and he"s attacking on offense and when he"s going and recovering loose pucks, he"s always the first one in on it, he"s always there pressuring and getting into people"s bodies and making things difficult. He"s not the tallest guy in the world, but he plays bigger than he looks and he plays hard and he competes hard and that"s what we look for in a Hurricanes player.
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Carolina Hurricanes Acquire Logan Stankoven, Pair of Picks From Dallas Stars For Mikko Rantanen
Carolina Hurricanes Acquire Logan Stankoven, Pair of Picks From Dallas Stars For Mikko Rantanen The Carolina Hurricanes have acquired winger Logan Stankoven and two first-round picks (2026 & 2027) and two third-round picks from the Dallas Stars for upcoming UFA forward Mikko Rantanen.
On how he"ll approach handling the room after this move : We"re going to talk through it. About what we"re doing with the team building and trying to keep things moving forward. It was very hard moving out Jack [Drury] and Marty [Necas]. They were part of our family and so that wasn"t something that you do lightly. We do want to stay aggressive though and if the team hasn"t gotten to where it wants to be yet, you need to keep taking these chances and trying to position yourself so that enough of them work out so that you keep moving forward and eventually get to where you want to be.
On other deadline moves : We were looking at moves on the trade market before the deadline. It was a complicated day because the Mikko transaction was consuming a lot of our bandwidth and honestly, until that transaction closed, we had very little cap space. So we couldn"t execute anything until then and at that point, there wasn"t a lot of time left and the pieces that we had targeted most where not necessarily available. It would have been nice had we been able to bring in another player or two, but it doesn"t always work out and ultimately, making sure we got the right deal there and set ourselves up in the big trade was the key thing. Again, I"m very comfortable with the pieces that we brought in there. Of course you"d always like to add where you can and keep pushing the team forward, but we have what we have and we will make the best of it.
On his current outlook on the team today : I think this is still a very strong team. It"s obviously not a perfect team - I don"t think there is a perfect team. I think there have been nights where the score made us look worse than our play because we"ve struggled lately to put some pucks in the net. That happens in every season to every team, but when it"s your own season and your own team and in recent games, you feel it very acutely. The first couple weeks of the season, everything went in, so I don"t think it"s a systemic issue with the team, I think it"s just where we are right now. Part of your job as a manager is to view things in the whole and the big picture and understand that those fluctuations happen. It"s very possible that we"ll have a hot streak starting in our next game. That"s just how hockey works sometimes. Sometimes pucks go in and sometimes they don"t. Ultimately, I think we"re carrying play about as well as we ever have. There are things that we can do better to get results out of that controlled play, but that"s always going to be true. That"s why players and coaches come to the rink every day and try to get a little bit better. Because there"s always room to keep improving.
On if this trade opens the door potentially for any younger players : We have tried to make sure there is always opportunity for younger players who are in the lineup to keep moving up as they earn their ice time and for those who are not yet in the lineup to move in as they show that they are ready. I think that"s an important part of how we build and an important part of how we keep things moving forward year after year so that we can stay where we want to stay and not just hit a quick peak and then fade.
On the status of Alexander Nikishin : He"s in the KHL, finishing out his regular season and then he"ll go into the playoffs. When those end, he"ll still be under contract through May 31 and he can"t come over until the contract ends. In many cases, the team may be open to terminating the contract early once the season is over, thereby allowing him to come over. At that point, you then have to go through immigration and logistics and there can be a little delay there, but our goal is to get him over as soon as we can. Our understanding from his agent is that that is his plan also. So we look forward to seeing that happen.
On William Carrier : Will"s been a huge loss, which again, I described Logan as being born to be a Hurricane, Will is another player who was born to be a Hurricane. He makes a difference to every line that he plays on because he"s so good along the walls and getting in against people and providing that aggressive and physical play that we need. It"s been a loss, but he is expected to be back some time by the start of the playoffs and we will see that make a difference with whoever he"s playing with.
On if the team has had any extension talks with upcoming UFAs : We"ve had initial conversations with just about every UFA on the roster. I would say it"s a little early to have anything wrapped up, but we"re working toward it. It"s a little bit tricky sometimes because some players don"t want to have to think about it during the season, don"t want anything hanging over them, but we at least want their agents to start thinking about it so we don"t get to the end of the year and have to rush. So we"re trying to lay the groundwork and make sure that we are ready to get things knocked out as we can.
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