Carolina Hurricanes Put Jeff Skinner’s Name “Out There”

The Carolina Hurricanes are a very interesting team to watch as we approach the draft on Friday night, armed with the second-overall pick and looking to make a splash in the trade market. Today, GM Don Waddell was on Sportsnet radio and spoke about scoring winger Jeff Skinner and where his future may take him:

Jeff Skinner has been with this franchise, he’s a 30 goal scorer, proven 30 goal scorer. We don’t score a lot of goals. Saying that we did, you know it’s no secret we put his name out there and we’ve gotten a lot of interest. Again though, when you’re trading that type of player you have to be careful because if you just want to move a player along, certainly there is lots of teams that would love to have that player. But he’s a big asset for us, and we’ve got to make sure that we get some kind of assets that we feel are gonna help us either today or in the future for a guy like Jeff.

Waddell goes on to downplay the idea that Noah Hanifin is available, but his comments about Skinner will do nothing to cool the hot stove over the coming weeks. Obviously there’s no guarantee that Skinner will get moved before next season, but there is an appetite there from the Hurricanes especially given that he’ll be an unrestricted free agent next offseason. Skinner is coming off a 24-goal campaign in 2017-18, but has proven that he can register even more than that in a good season, racking up 30 or more goals three times. The 26-year old is still in the prime of his career and would be a lethal offensive mercenary for a team to plug into their attack, if even only for a single season.

The Hurricanes have built an intriguing group of young players through the draft and trade, but still haven’t been able to put it all together. Much of that is due to poor goaltending, something that Waddell has promised to resolve this summer. If Skinner is moved out, there could be even more opportunity for their younger players to step into prominent roles, with names like Martin Necas and Janne Kuokkanen just waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves.