Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

The end of an era is upon us – it was only six weeks ago we traded for Mikko Rantanen and now, he is a Dallas Star, in a blockbuster deal that netted us five assets (I will get to that in a bit).  The inspiration for this blog comes from the song “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs”, which seems fitting.  It’s abbreviated – much like Mikko’s time here with the organization.  The “Electric Feel” the night we landed him turned into a classic line from Fallout Boy’s song as well – Mikko, “thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great…”

There have been plenty of different take aways from the move that sent Mikko packing – fans have been angry, disappointed and confused at a minimum.  Heck, even I have gotten a little snarky, casually referring to him as ‘Emo Rantanen’ because of his lack of excitement and a generally depressed demeanor on the ice for us, specifically in his last four or five games with the team.  He flashed, sure, but Mikko Rantanen was not the same Mikko everyone was excited about when we made the blockbuster deal back in January. 

I want to start by going back through that sequence of events that led to his arrival in Raleigh and walk through what I can only piece through various outlets and personalities (remember, I’m not an insider).  I think it is an important exercise, so I’ll go through it:

• Eric Tulsky (after the initial trade in January) had made mention of his and Chris MacFarland’s discussions dating back to the last offseason, presumably about the Martin Necas situation.  (MacFarland is the General Manager of the Colorado Avalanche).  Necas was seen around the league as a high caliber player and while we eventually signed him, prior to that signing there were rumors about a trade to send Necas to several places (Columbus, Buffalo and Winnipeg all come to mind).  It would make sense that he could potentially fit their system in Colorado.
• The Martin Necas contract gets signed – a team friendly deal of $6.5m/yr over the next two years.  A couple of things stood out in this deal:
• First, this deal had no movement protections for Martin Necas.
• Second, it was a two-year deal, so it had some term to it
• Third, he would be an unrestricted free agent after the deal expired.  This was a deal built to be moved.
• Necas starts hot (well documented on the podcast), which is part of the reason why the Hurricanes got off to the blistering 14-4 start at the beginning of the season
• Eric Tulsky, as any good general manager should be doing, continued to talk to other general managers around the league regarding opportunities to make the team better.  He and Dundon have made no secret about the idea that we are going to always be aggressive in looking to make the team better.
• Across to the other coast, Vancouver was dealing with some of their own internal strife between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller.  Rumors began to swirl that the Carolina Hurricanes might be in on either one of those two players.  A name that kept coming up that was potentially linked to a deal with them – Martin Necas.  There were other names associated with those two, but Necas was the centerpiece.
• Because we have had known interest from other teams in Martin Necas, we start to call around to see what else might be out there – you know, to try to maximize the value and build a market for him.  Colorado shows interest.  The Avalanche are having their own internal struggles, but in the form of coming to terms with one of their superstars – Mikko Rantanen.
• Colorado and Mikko’s agent – Andy Scott – continue going back and forth on a deal, but, feeling like the Avs are lowballing, the agent plays a little hardball.  To Colorado, that meant that they weren’t close – and with the concern of losing a Top 10 asset in the league for nothing in Free Agency, Colorado engages in discussions about moving him. 
• Colorado starts some discussions with Carolina, who shows interest in Rantanen (who wouldn’t?).  They then head back to Andy Scott and share this news with him – that they have something in the works to move him to Raleigh if they can’t come to some sort of agreement.  Scott, calling the bluff of Colorado’s front office, said something to the effect of ‘we would sign in Carolina’, as if to say – ‘I dare you’. 
• Colorado and Carolina have some additional discussions, and Colorado shares that Mikko’s agent had shared that his player would sign in Carolina.  There may have been some additional (flawed) intelligence there, but this was what the Hurricanes needed to hear apparently to get this deal in motion
• Carolina, Colorado and Chicago (a meeting of the C’s as it were) come together to get the framework of a deal together.  The Hurricanes would send a package to include a couple players and a couple picks to Colorado for Mikko and a pick for some cap relief on Mikko’s contract and Taylor Hall.
• The clock was ticking, because the situation in Vancouver was coming to a head – either Pettersson or Miller needed to be moved – and, as written and discussed before, the Hurricanes were in on either one of those two as well – we had to decide quick.
• Once again, the Avalanche front office approaches Andy Scott, says there is a deal in place and if they aren’t coming to terms, they are moving on.  The agent continues to dig in on the issue – thinking there isn’t a world where Colorado would move his player.  In the end, Mikko Rantanen is traded to Carolina.

Colorado had always had an interest in Martin Necas, so it made sense for them to continue to engage with us, especially knowing they had their own issues with a player signing.  So, they sent that player to us so that we could deal with it.

I’ve gone on record before saying I don’t mind the swing that the Carolina Hurricanes took to make the move to bring in Mikko Rantanen.  Are there some flaws in how it went down?  Sure.  For starters, my hope is that Eric Tulsky had pen and paper in hand when Dallas was talking to Mikko about an extension BEFORE the trade – that is probably what should have happened from the word ‘go’ on our end.   

That said, Tulsky knew what he was getting – a player on an expiring deal that we would need to be in full on recruitment mode to woo him into staying.  He said as much in the interviews he did post trade.  Further, Tulsky made mention that they weren’t going to rush him to decide immediately – which is probably another fatal flaw.  If we knew it would take some time to “recruit” him and it wouldn’t be an immediate decision he needed to make, then it’s clear very early that we weren’t sure he was going to stay.  Was it a possibility he could stay based off the intelligence Tulsky received – maybe.  But it wasn’t locked down.  And in that sense, I can understand the discourse from many pundits on why that deal was a mess. 

Once Mikko landed in New York (we were on a road trip at the time), it sounds like he made it known quickly that there were only four teams he was interested in, and none of them were the Hurricanes (this is coming from Rod Brind ’Amour to Adam Gold in a pregame interview before the Winnipeg Jets game).  Over the next 14 games, we played a few games that looked like the hockey we have come to enjoy, but overall, it seemed as though there was a shift in how we played.  Rod made mention of it about a week or so after the trade – that things may be tweaked a little with the new talent that was added to the team.  I do have to wonder if we made that transition as part of a “recruitment” pitch. 

Regardless, that all changed about four or five games ago (prior to the deal to send Mikko to Dallas), when we started playing a sounder game defensively and pressured much better in the offensive end.  This, in my eyes, coincided with the contract offer and him not saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to it.  Speculation went rampant – even I said it was fine to take his time.  But if he knew he would never play here, then why hem and haw about it?  If he wasn’t interested in being the identity (for better or worse), then we needed to get back to our own identity.

The Boston game was the only one of those five (Mikko’s last game) where we looked bad – and that was the day before the deadline where this dark cloud was hanging over everyone.  The postgame interviews sounded more like a funeral eulogy than a team celebrating a win they probably didn’t deserve.  His mind had not changed about the four teams he would be interested in continuing his career with.

So Tulsky did what he had to do – he had been engaged with a variety of teams over the few days leading up to the trade deadline.  Late in the evening, it was reported that Dallas had been the frontrunner and that the framework for a trade had been agreed to.  Dallas wanted to get a contract in place prior to any trade – which makes all the sense in the world given what Carolina had gone through. 

There were some reports suggesting that Andy Scott (probably the true villain in this story) and the Dallas front office were at an impasse, so the Hurricanes had to pivot to another option, which sounded like the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Initial rumblings were that we had asked about a Marner for Mikko swap, but that Marner wouldn’t waive his no-movement clause for the Hurricanes.  That’s a strikeout for us, because that likely means Mitch will not be wearing a Hurricanes sweater after the offseason either. 

Additional rumors started to circulate about the possibility of Matthew Knies and a couple picks coming back – which is a pretty good haul.  But Dallas and Mikko's representation came back to the table and got the deal done.  In return, we received Logan Stankoven, a 2026 1^st and 3^rd, and a 2028 1^st and 3^rd.  All told, the sum of the moving parts for 6 weeks of time to try to recruit Mikko Rantanen include:

• OUT: Martin Necas, Jack Drury, 2025 2^nd, 2026 4^th
• IN: Logan Stankoven, 2026 1^st, 2026 3^rd, 2028 1^st, 2028 3^rd

Looking at it in that lens, it looks OK.  Stankoven fits what we do, and the draft capital will go a long way to making other moves to continue to improve our team.  Could we have held onto Martin Necas and Jack Drury to get more of an impact player for today?  Sure – in fact, we probably could have solved our center issue with a deal with Vancouver instead of trying this. 

All things considered, the bounty that Eric Tulsky received was strong, considering we had very little leverage on our end.  While the word is that Mikko only had four cities he would play for, that wasn’t knowledge prior to the deadline.  To add to it, we get mere peanuts (maybe a 2^nd round pick) if we held him after the deadline and tried to win it this year.  The dirty secret is that I don’t think the organization really thinks we have a shot at the Cup this year – this was the retool and get the salary cap situation right season, all while staying competitive.  We’ve done that.

As everything was going down, I wanted to take Tulsky to task for leaking out that we were shopping Mikko Rantanen around.  Because I thought it really impacted his play and, ultimately, his interest in Raleigh (given his perceived interest in a quiet media market – quiet is not how I would describe these last six weeks).  But honestly, I am glad he did it.  He needed to build up a market for Mikko so he had some leverage to say, ‘well I can get this over here’ and play one team against the other.  Mikko was transparent with us after his agent made it appear that Carolina was a real possibility.  Because it wasn’t. 

I still can’t understand why we didn’t get something formalized prior to our initial deal, aside from maybe some dirty pool between the agent and the Avalanche – remember, we had a player they wanted in Necas.  It’s possible that the Avs were told by Andy Scott that his player would sign with Carolina, but that the Avs knew deep down he never would.  Without being in the room where it happened, I am not certain if the question was asked to have a conversation with Scott and Rantanen, but if it wasn’t, that is pure negligence on the part of the Hurricanes. 

Fans – we have a right to be angry, to be frustrated at how things went down in this deal.  I have had a couple conversations with some people wondering if we can ever get someone of that caliber to stay long term now that we have lost Guentzel and now Rantanen.  I’ll caution that those two situations were different and, from what I have heard from anyone in the know of the Guentzel discussions – he wanted to stay.  Mikko, for his part, didn’t. 

I do want to give Rantanen a touch of credit for telling us before the deadline so we may be able to move him to a more amenable destination.  And for him to sign a deal now instead of later ensured a trove in return for us - it wasn't like he was trying to screw us over.  Mikko didn’t ask for this, so I guess it makes sense that he would kind of work to get out of a situation he didn’t create.  Mikko also had to forego his unrestricted free agency – he couldn’t build the market for himself – and for that side of it, Andy Scott made an unforced error with his little game of chicken with the Avalanche front office, likely costing his client millions.  Sure, he got a deal done that was a good one for his guy, but the market could have been reset by Mikko – now, we’ll find out what Mitch Marner gets to see what that market could have been.

There is blame to go around – ultimately the blame sits at our feet.  We can point to the Avalanche or the agent or the player, but in the end, it’s our blame to take.  In high stakes gambles like that, we have to have so much information that it isn’t really much of a gamble at all.  We went 6-6-1 in games where he played (a three-game winning streak to close that time out, which we played decent) – for a stretch of 12.5% of the season (the 3-6-1 stretch), we were bad.  We can’t be willing to change our identity midseason because of a new name in town – that goes for players and coaches.

Only time will tell, but this could lead to a pissed off Sebastian Aho – for a dude who loves this team and loves this city, he must feel at least slightly annoyed that his fellow countryman rejected both.  This could lead to an energized Logan Stankoven, who already plays with a chip on his shoulder.   The kid is hungry – he’ll have his opportunity here in Raleigh.  This could lead to a more laser focused group come the playoffs - paying attention to all the details required to ensure system success.

We are armed with draft capital out the ying yang, a slew of young talent coming in (looking at you Nadeau, Morrow, Nikishin), younger talent already on the roster (Blake, Stankoven) and a core of players that are locked up for term (Slavin, Aho, Jarvis).  The future is bright in Carolina.  We may have whiffed on this one, but we haven’t blown a Cup window – we are firmly opening that window today.  And we were going to be in that window anyway – with or without Mikko.