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The Hurricanes have qualified for the postseason in five straight years after a decades-long drought, and it’s been absolutely crucial from a small-market team security standpoint.
Attendance numbers are off the charts and haven’t waned. Relocation rumors have completely died down, and there’s plenty of buzz about the team around a town—Raleigh, North Carolina—that has been dominated by college sports in the past.
The tricky thing about buzz, though, is the pressure and expectations that come with it. The team has exercised discipline in rarely going after rentals at the deadline, and the front office is famously calculated to a fault with its dealings.
This isn’t inherently bad, and it’s clearly how you reach perennial playoff status in a small market. The team has hired some of the league’s brightest minds like assistant general manager Eric Tulsky to optimize every decision.
The Hurricanes have made it to the Eastern Conference Final only to get swept twice in five years. With key players like Teuvo Teravainen, Brett Pesce, Brady Skjei, Martin Nečas and Seth Jarvis in the final years of their contracts, there’s been growing pressure to play it less safe and make a significant move at the deadline.
When the Canes were rumored to be in on the Guentzel sweepstakes, the fanbase had little faith that Carolina would get it done considering how many players it has talked to, and ultimately decided not to budge in the past.
Head coach Rod Brind’Amour even uttered the phrase so commonplace in Canesland that it has become a meme: “We like our group.”
krystyna @krystynakrez
if don & rod are going to commit to the bit so am i pic.twitter.com/yvZnFNbXgi
It’s become so meme’d that we tend to forget GM Don Waddell has acquired several big stars via trade: Dougie Hamilton, Brent Burns and Vincent Trocheck, to name a few. It’s just that the name of the game has always been term.
Well, term or not, Jake freakin’ Guentzel is officially part of the well-liked group. You don’t want to exaggerate and pat the front office on the back too much for simply doing its job, but this was a move that deviated from the typical Hurricanes game plan, and you’ve got to give them credit for acquiring the most coveted player of the deadline and being patient enough to pass on others recently who didn’t fit their needs as precisely as Guentzel did. And since they passed on plenty of others, they had the space and capacity to fit him on the roster and beat out other buyers.
It’s encouraging to finally know for sure that the Canes will budge on a rental they truly love, and it’s a vote of confidence to the players that Waddell and Brind’Amour do like their group enough to give them every chance at the Cup.
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