Nicolas Deslauriers of the Philadelphia Flyers looks on during pregame warmups before a preseason game against the New York Islanders at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Oct. 2, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Emilee Chinn
Getty Images
RALEIGH
A lot of Carolina Hurricanes fans woke up Friday wondering how their team would handle the NHL’s trade deadline day.
Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky had shown the willingness to swing for the fences the past two years, trading big-name forwards like Jake Guentzel in 2024, and then Mikko Rantanen last year. What about this year?
There were no big rips from the GM this year, not that he didn’t try.
“You know how we operate,” Tulsky said at a Friday press conference, “We’ve said we’re not going to stop until we have the 20 best players all on one team, and of course every opportunity we get to try and make the team better, we’re going after it as hard as we can.
“Especially when they are high-end players, we want to take those swings. So we spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks running down leads, trying to find opportunities to bring in those high-end players. Sometimes, the deal just isn’t there.”
The deadline was 3 p.m., and the Canes decided to stand pat with a team that was 39-16-6, atop the Metropolitan Division and leading the Eastern Conference in point percentage heading into Friday’s road game at Edmonton.
The Canes did acquire veteran forward Nicolas Deslauriers from the Philadelphia Flyers to bring added size and toughness to the lineup when needed. Deslauriers, listed at 6-1 and 217 pounds, has more than 700 games of NHL experience and has had as many as 136 penalty minutes in a season.
“He has the character and toughness we wanted to bring to the group,” Tulsky said Friday.
The return to the Flyers was a conditional seventh-round draft pick, Tulsky said it would be based on how far the Canes go in the Stanley Cup playoff and how much Deslauriers plays.
Nicolas Deslauriers, left, of the Philadelphia Flyers fights Marcus Foligno of the Minnesota Wild in the first period at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Oct. 18, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mitchell Leff Getty Images
Awaiting a decision was Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour. The team practiced Thursday in Edmonton, but did not hold a morning skate Friday.
Brind’Amour said Friday he liked adding Deslauriers to the mix, adding, “We know his character. He’s just a great teammate. We know he hasn’t played much, but we do know what he does bring when he’s in the lineup, and that’s super tough. He stands up for his group.”
At the same time, Brind’Amour said, there’s disappointment from the players in what didn’t happen Friday.
“They were hoping to see us make a splash,” he said. “It’s tough. We’re one of the best teams in the league right now and teams are making deals to try and catch us. So on one side you say wouldn’t it be nice to throw your chips in and see if you can improve your team, but we love the group we have. But it’s behind us and we’ve got to move on.”
In what many NHL observers described as a sellers’ market this year, the asking prices were deemed too high by some GMs. The St. Louis Blues, for example, seemed willing to part with center Robert Thomas for the right price. There was said to be a lot of interest but no takers.
Tulsky obtained Guentzel, a proven point producer, from the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2024. But he was unable to come to terms with the forward on a new contract after the season and Guentzel signed as a free agent with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Carolina Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky listens during a press conference on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, at Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C. Kaitlin McKeown The News & Observer
The Rantanen deal with Colorado last year, which sent forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury to the Avalanche, sent ripples through the league on Jan. 24, well before the deadline. It was a three-team transaction that also brought forward Taylor Hall to the Canes from the Chicago Blackhawks.
Then, it fell apart. Rantanen was disgruntled from the start and then traded March 7 to the Dallas Stars for forward Logan Stankoven and four draft picks.
“In the Colorado deal we showed we’re willing to take risks to do it,” Tulsky said. “In the Dallas deal we showed we’re willing to pivot when circumstances aren’t what we expected them to be. …
“At this deadline what we showed is sometimes the deal we want isn’t there and we have to be disciplined and not do it. The things were we looking at, the price we were being offered, we felt like would have been a step back, both in the near term and going forward. And it just didn’t make sense then.
“Having some discipline to able to walk away from those moves and not feel like you have to do something is part of being able to run the team.”
There seemed to be momentum this last week of the Canes looking to reunite with former center Vincent Trocheck, who played three seasons with the Canes before leaving in free agency for the New York Rangers in 2023.
Trocheck is 33 and his offensive production has dipped, but he was seen as just the player the Canes needed: a consistently good second-line center who is right-handed, strong on faceoffs and aggressive on defense.
Trocheck, who recently brought back an Olympic gold medal as part of Team USA’s successful run in the Winter Games in Milan, ultimately was not traded Friday by the Rangers.
“It was kind of a strange deadline in that there were a lot of teams on the bubble leading up to it who were not sure where they were going to go,” Tulsky said. “So there were weeks where there was nothing available. And then in the last couple of days a bunch of teams decided to put guys on the market, so it went from a really tight market to a flooded market very quickly.. A lot of stuff didn’t really get serious until the last couple of days.”
Tulsky said he feels confident in the group he has, noting it’s on pace for 112 points or more. It is a team that has dealt with injuries and worked its way through them.
Goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov was 6-2-0 with a 2.33 goals-against average in eight starts this season undergoing lower-body surgery in late December. He could return for the Stanley Cup playoffs, Tulsky said.
“Pyotr is working his way back from injury and we’ll see his time length,” Tulsky said. “He may be in the mix by time we get to the playoffs.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2026 at 3:51 PM.
The News & Observer
In more than 40 years at The N&O, Chip Alexander has covered the N.C. State, UNC, Duke and East Carolina beats, and now is in his 15th season on the Carolina Hurricanes beat. Alexander, who has won numerous writing awards at the state and national level, covered the Hurricanes’ move to North Carolina in 1997 and was a part of The N&O’s coverage of the Canes’ 2006 Stanley Cup run.