Hurricanes choose ten players in the NHL Draft and trade Jake Guentzel to the Lightning.
In his brief stint with the Hurricanes, Guentzel was a fantastic fit after being signed at the deadline. Alongside Sebastian Aho, the winger developed synergy and finished with eight goals and 25 points in 17 games. If Guentzel doesn’t sign with the Lightning before tomorrow, he will become an unrestricted free agent.
This is a major setback for Carolina given how crucial Guentzel was to the starting lineup and how near the Hurricanes appeared to be to re-signing him. In the past, the organization has been extremely reticent to re-sign UFAs to lucrative contracts, but in this instance, they need to have taken whatever necessary action to revive the forward.
While the Hurricanes have demonstrated in the past that they are capable of finding innovative replacements, it will be extremely difficult to find Guentzel’s high-end productivity in free agency tomorrow. It’s a frustrating result for the Hurricanes since Guentzel seems quite willing to re-sign in Carolina, but the team just doesn’t get a deal done early enough. In the upcoming years, the team’s decision to lose Guentzel can come back to haunt them.
In the meanwhile, yesterday saw the Hurricanes select ten players in the NHL Draft. The franchise traded their 27th overall pick to the Chicago Blackhawks in return for picks No. 34 and 50, and as a result, the team received their first pick in the second round of the draft.
After that, the Hurricanes used the picks to choose Nikita Artamonov, a forward who, at the age of just 18, had 23 points in 54 KHL games, and right-shot defenseman Dominik Badinka of the SHL.
The two previous transactions made by the Hurricanes involved sending the 92nd overall pick to the Blackhawks in return for a 2025 third-round pick, and giving up the 60th overall pick once again to get picks 69 and 133.
Carolina chose Noel Fransen (69th OA), Alexander Siryatsky (124th OA), Oskar Vuollet (133 OA), Justin Poirier (156 OA), Timur Kol (168 OA), Roman Shokhrin (184 OA), Fyodor Avramov (188 OA), and Fyodor Avramov (220 OA) as their eight remaining choices in rounds 3–7 after Badinka and Artamonov’s selections in the second round.