Evaluating the Carolina Hurricanes' Free Agency Moves & Trades

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast. Brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at CapitalFinancialUSA.com to learn more about Adam Gold. See you next time. Looking forward to this date. It was even announced. It was announced.

Yeah, people knew about it. This date was set. And then it didn't happen. And then it didn't happen.

We didn't get Mason Martin. Because you were talking to someone else. Um, my bad.

My bad. Um, I must have been, the walk to my car must have been a lot longer than I deemed it to be. You know, like in radio time, you're like, alright, I know exactly how long it takes me to do things like go to the bathroom.

That's personal, but like, you know what it takes, right? You know distances in this building that you can get. And now I just realized I need to recalibrate. It's like, oh, I got four minutes, I can fill my water up. Yeah, yeah, four minutes. I can go to the bathroom. Four minutes? That's an eternity. I can make a sandwich, eat it, and be back home.

I've done that. A hundred percent. Give me four minutes. But no, I misread the two minutes I thought I had there. Sam Hays-Permar filling in for Adam Gold.

But guess what? If you were missing Adam Gold, don't worry. He'll be joining us in just a little bit to break down some of these hurricanes moves on the first day of NHL free agency and the hurricanes were once again active. I'm going to talk specifically with Gold about the moves and his thoughts on them, but then I'm going to talk in general about just how savvy the Canes have become and what their reputation now is and how they remind me of another team that gets a lot of credit for being the sort of smarter than the average sports team and how they deal with personnel. And I believe the hurricanes sort of had that reputation, but we have actual sports going on right now.

So let's go and get this thing out of the gate. It is the Open Championship, although I'm going to say a word about that right now, right? It's the British Open. For most of my life, people just said British Open and then sometime like five to ten years ago, golf people started getting really snooty and be like, no, it's not the British Open.

It's just the Open. Almost kind of like the office, before there was the office, there was the British version of the office and like super hipsters were like, I like the British office better, right? But people who were in Great Britain would have just referred to it as the office, right? Because it started there and they were in Great Britain.

So similarly, they get mad when we call it the British Open when it's supposed to just be the Open, right? But I think I've gone next level on this one. Okay, are you ready?

I'm going to make an analogy. You know how like every year now for like 20 years at least, big stores and grocery stores and big box stores, the targets of the world and what have you are always a little more ahead of the holidays than people would like, right? So like in August, somebody's going to have Christmas stuff up, right? Not Halloween. Halloween stuff's probably already up. I mean, mid, late July.

No, no, no. This is Christmas in July time. Well, I know, I know. But I'm saying somebody's just like in May, somebody had their back to school stuff up. In August or September, somebody had their Christmas stuff up. And like, yes, I've been the person in Target being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why is there this Christmas section back here?

It's usually a little tucked away a little bit, right? But you know, I'm like, why is this here? But it doesn't really bother me. Just like there's many things in Target that I'm not there to buy that I just blow right by, right? They don't bother me because I'm not buying them. Then there are people that like post on Facebook and all these other things and they're like, why are the Target Christmas decorations out so early? This is all, they're ruining Christmas. Let me just have Halloween or whatever it is.

And I think I've gone past the point of being annoyed by Target having their Christmas decorations out early and more annoyed by the people who complain about Target having their Christmas decorations out early. Much is the same with the British Open or the Open Championship. I don't feel the need to call it one or the other. And I don't feel the need to clarify every time I say British Open. I know you golf nerds say just the Open Championship, but I'm just going to say British Open. That to me, the explaining which one you're using and why you do is more annoying than the people who actually get mad about people saying the British Open Championship. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's another one of those things in life where like the complainers have gotten worse about the actual problem.

So just move on. British people will, you know, think that Americans are being ugly and entitled because they have to call the British Open and will think they're snobs or whatever and life will just go on. As for the actual golf, guess what? A guy from Wake Forest is leading a major champion. Wake Forest Golf. They are the Alabama football of the golf world. People are talking about this conference realignment thing and everybody's like, I don't know, would UNC go with Duke?

Would UNC go with Virginia? When do the golf people get involved and be like, we got to get Wake Forest in the SEC? I imagine the SEC has pretty good golf programs. I feel like Florida, I feel like they have a good golf program.

I don't know. They might. I know Arizona State does. Wake Forest Golf should be pulling numbers.

I don't know what kind of TV contract they have, but they just put out champions. Obviously, Webb Simpson, major champion. You've got Wills Alatoras has recently been contending.

And this actually goes back for a while. Curtis Strange, the Wake Forest guy. Lanny Watkins, the Wake Forest guy.

There's two guys that I'm picturing right now. Haas, Jay Haas, Bill Haas. Just tons of Wake Forest golfers, especially for a small school. Oh yes, by the way, also Arnold Palmer.

Don't forget him. He's probably a big reason why the legacy of Wake Forest of golf after him is so good. Any school that went to Arnold Palmer is going to attract other golfers. It's an old school Wake Forest. Yes, he went to Wake Forest when it was in Wake Forest. You can go play Arnold Palmer's old course, Pasco Golf Club up there. It's a nice little course, just nine holes now. But yes, Cameron Young.

And this is one of the reasons also, we say go check out the Rex Hospital Open when they're in town, the Corn Fairy Tour. Cameron Young was playing in that tournament last year. He got two ends on the Corn Fairy Tour last year. And he's done very well. Tied for third at the PGA this year, I believe. He's had some other top five finishes.

Looking strong. No, I do not expect that Cameron Young will finish the weekend at the head of the British Open. But he could. You've seen people, I mean, John Daly was kind of a nobody when he came out and won the British Open, right? You could see it happening, but he is obviously a very good golfer at putting himself in a position to be a mainstay on the PGA Tour. Rory McIlroy, his two back, also finished.

He's at six under. He had a great round. And Rory is kind of the, if he's not the fan favorite, he probably is. He's definitely the media favorite. And it's partly because of his long legacy of being friendly with the media, of being a great golfer at a young age, of being a good golfer for his whole career, having spots of greatness, but also sometimes where he stretches where he hadn't won as much, including one where he's kind of in right now. He plays very well. He's that guy that'll have the random, you know, out of contention for a major, but he'll shoot 60 on a Sunday and, you know, finish three back, even though he never really challenged, but just because he's that talented, right? Sometimes it does look like it's a little between the ears for McIlroy. And, but again, he's won a whole lot.

So mostly he's been really good between his ears. But the recent news about golf this summer, the discussion has been about the split of the tours, the new live golf tour. It's been way more of a disruptor to the PGA tour than I think a lot of those guys imagined. I didn't realize there was going to be this much money involved. I, you know, you kind of knew there was going to be money involved. But if I had known two years ago, if they said, we're going to pitch these numbers of people, I'll be like, oh yeah, I mean, that's when you start paying these dudes more money just for a single, just to sign up than they've ever made for their careers total. And they've been at it for 15 or 20 years.

It just, it's significant, right? Rory, along with Justin Thomas, have been the two dudes that have basically become the players spokespeople for the PGA tour. Adamantly speaking out against the live tour, speaking up for why the PGA tour is great, defending it.

Now we obviously saw Tiger this week because he showed up and he was making his statements. But Rory's the one that week in and week out is getting asked about it and has shown that he's not afraid to talk about it. And especially, I mean, I know that obviously Rory joins the PGA tour for a lot of reasons. There's money, competitive interest here in America over slightly more so than the European tour.

That's where he's from. For him to be a European dude, defending the American tour as strongly as he is, is making him a huge favorite. Obviously, he's a well liked at a British Open, right? So he's carrying a lot of pressure and expectations. And so a great way to see him start going 600 today. I don't know what the betting odds will be, but I'll bet the betting odds after the end of today will be better for Rory McIlroy to win the British Open than they will for Cameron Young, right? Like just been there before. Cameron Smith with a good round.

There's other dudes out there right now. A lot more good scores in the morning than expected in the afternoon. It was pretty, St. Andrews is one of those courses. I remember playing it on Tiger Woods and I would dominate this course. And even when you look at it, you know, as a weekend duffer dude who loves to shoot 90 and rarely breaks it, but you know, can every now and then, I get up there and I see par 4, 345 yards.

Let's go. This is my kind of course. And keeping it low on the ground, I always do that.

Sometimes not intentionally, but no. But you're good at it. I always know how fired up I am to watch a Masters, right? And see the course. I underestimate how fired up I would be to like see St. Andrews and just see them playing that course.

Seeing the cool, the shared greens. The bunkers feel a little bit like of a luck factor. Sometimes you can hit a good shot that just rolls for a long way and ends up going in one. But watching the guys think their way around the course. I like, I like the fact that both there are drivable par 4s, but also like greens that can make it super hard and bunkers that can, you know, just take shots away from you.

Tiger Woods, of course, is of fan interest. Came out of the gate with a double bogey. Now, one of those strokes was his fault. He had a three-foot bogey putt that he could have made and been like, all right, bad luck.

So that was his fault. He missed the three-foot bogey putt and had to settle for double bogey. The other part, the other part was not his fault and one of the worst rules in golf. He hit his drive. He hit it right to where any golfer would want to be. He should have had a nice little shot at the flag, which, you know, was tucked at the front of the green right near a slight little body of water that you got to get over. It's not even a body of water.

It's like a leg of water, a little creeklet, a burn, I believe they call it over there. But his ball rolls into a divot, a shot taken by another golfer, either in a practice round or earlier that day. So as he's hit it in the fairway, he should be hitting on fine grass. Instead, he's hitting off sand. There's a rule that you don't have to hit off ground under repair.

Like if, you know, if it rains too much and there's a mud patch or they're fixing a part, they're trying to grow grass and you hit your drive in there, well, you just get to pick it up and move it out of there laterally or back, whatever it is, right? You should be able to do that in a divot. You just have to move a ball two inches back to be hitting a normal shot. And instead, Tiger Woods hits out of a divot, hits into water, double bogeys.

He's basically out of the tournament. Just drop behind the divot. I mean, take a step back from the divot, drop it. You shouldn't even have to drop. I mean, I know for rules purposes and for uniformity, we have to make it like a drop.

You should be able to patch or create that thing and just tap it back a little bit out of the divot onto the green and just do what every golfer does when we're on the course of the weekend. If you play out of divots, you're a psycho. Like, you are a, you're a, whatever. I don't want to demean people. People do sports for their own reasons, but it's like, that's just not how it was intended to be, okay?

And maybe if some, whatever. Don't hit out of divots. We need to fix it for pros. Replace your divots.

And definitely replace your divots so that there are fewer of them out there, but we shouldn't have to hit out of divots. St. Andrews, a lot of fun to watch. A lot of guys chipping when they should be putting. Another weekend warrior golfer will tell you, yo, 30 foot off the green, but it's totally flat and short, short, short grass between you and there.

Let's put that thing, baby. Why are you chipping into these greens? Bring a lot of danger into play.

Xander Schauffele was putting off a paved road today. You love to see it. That is the golf that I like to see.

Bring me back to St. Andrews. But yes, Cameron Young, the story of the day, his round one, eight under. We'll see how, again, he went out in the best conditions.

We'll see how he holds up in other ones. Next up, getting out the gate, it is your Carolina hurricanes making moves yesterday on the first day of free agency. Now, remember just a couple of days ago or a week ago, they traded Tony D'Angelo, picked up some draft picks, you know, ahead of all this.

So they're sitting on some commodities. Then one of the first moves we saw in free agency or that I saw was Vincent Trojcek signing a seven year deal. Was it long term deal with the Rangers, which was of all teams. I know I saw a lot of common theme was like, this guy's going to be a problem for the current hurricanes, isn't it? Like he seems like a dude that's going to be good for other teams. But no, Vincent Trojcek gone.

Not totally unexpected because he was going to get a good deal. He's been a good player for the hurricanes these past two and a half seasons or whatever it was exactly. Hard to figure out in Covid years. Three and a half? Yeah.

Covid years. Yeah. But then the two big moves of the day, there were a couple of free agent signings as well, but they picked up Brent Burns. Yeah, there's a pretty good player. He's older, 37, but he's a 2017 Norris trophy winner. So the best defenseman, very good defenseman.

Put him with Slavin right there. It's one of the best defensive pairs in the NHL. Yeah. And he likes to score, likes to shoot.

Yeah, he does. There was good reaction to that of like, good. You know, there were a couple power plays where it's like, man, I just wish somebody would just throw it on net.

Like, let's get this thing going. And Brent Burns seems like a guy who might do that. We gave up Steven Lorentz, a goalie prospect, and maybe some future considerations. But yes, getting to get Brent Burns and Lane Peterson.

Then they missed out on signing Mason Marchments, which would have been a free agent signing. Guy was with the Panthers. He got down to the Canes and the Stars. It got to the point where Pierre Lebrun, who, as best as I can tell, is the closest thing we have to Adrian Wojnarowski for NHL.

Yeah, he's one of those guys. There are a couple people that break the NHL free agent news, but Pierre was right on it. And he said, he was like, it looks like the Canes and Marchments are getting very close. He's like, but it's not done.

He's like, I'm not telling you it's done, but this is what I'm hearing. And then that allowed him enough room to still be accurate and be like, no, Marchments went to Dallas. So then the Canes hit another trade.

Max Pacioretty and Dylan Coughlin from the Las Vegas Golden Knights who needed to drop salary. And we gave them almost nothing. No. Literally nothing? Yeah. Future considerations. To break it down, we could go to no one else but our good friend.

Adam Gold in studio with my friend Coach Pete DeRuta with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, how does longevity risk figure into our retirement and income plan?

This is the best of times and the worst of times, Adam. Longevity risk means we're going to live too long. But to me, every day I live is not too long. Right.

Absolutely. So we want our money to outlive us. And unfortunately, many people I've seen, you out there listening, maybe one of them, your money is not designed to outlive you. You might outlive your money and that's not what we want to have happen because when we get to that day after you run out of money, it's not going to be a fun time. So let's design a plan that guarantees you'll never run out of money. We call it the GPI Plan, Growth Protection Lifetime Income for the next 10 people. This is a golden ticket, Adam. A thousand-dollar value, we're going to do it at no cost or obligation. And all you have to do is call. We make it so easy.

Would you like financial independence into your retirement and beyond it? 800-661-7383. That golden ticket is a one-thousand-dollar value or you can text Adam to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. He is the Canes Insider for 99.9 The Fan. You can check out the Canes Quarter Podcast, which I believe he has dropped a morning after podcast as if it were a game. He's treating free agency as if it were the real thing. He's also, you know, the host of this show, the Adam Gold show. It is my good friend Adam Gold.

I got to start with this. There's all kinds of free agency, rumors are out there. I'm throwing a rumor at you. Is the rumor true that you took the day off of work just to watch Tiger play the British Open? Well, I never in my life could imagine you accusing me of watching Tiger Woods four over par through five holes. It's still under per par though. You get a bogey per hole. He needed a breakfast ball.

Be honest with me. He drove into a divot on the first hole. I know.

We're going to talk about that. That's one of the worst rules in golf. No average golfer, no weekend golfer is out there playing out of divots and it should not happen. It's literally ground under repair. It's literally ground under repair.

Put a little chalk line around it. But we have more important things to talk about than the British Open because it's just the first half of the day, even though Wake Forest guy is leading. But let's talk some hockey. The main question that any fan tries to answer when their team makes moves and now we've made several of them. We've seen players leave the canes either through free agency or trade and we've now had some players acquired through free agency or trade. Are the Hurricanes better right now than before the offseason started? Well, no, because I think they're incomplete. They don't have a full defense yet.

Gotcha. So right now Carolina has really just four NHL defenseman in my opinion and those four are better than Carolina's top four a year ago. Because I believe Burns is an upgrade over DeAngelo and I really like Tony DeAngelo.

So this is not a slight towards him. Burns is potentially Hall of Famer and he's still good at age 37. He's also bigger. He'll play less.

He'll be more physical now that he doesn't have to play 26 minutes a night playing next to Jacob Slavin. So I think the Hurricanes are better in their top four defensively. Max Pacioretti is a really good piece to their top six and will make them better if they can stay healthy. So in their top six, I'll say yes, they're better. In their top four defensively, yes, they're better.

But I think they still have some work to do. I'd love to see him add some size to the forward group and they really need two more NHL defenseman and they have to get rid of Jake Gardner's contract. Knowing I was going to be filling in for you today, I actually did some research. I read about these trades as they happen. You know, there's a lot of places that do real-time grades and stuff and everybody gave the Canes high marks in both of the trades.

Which one impressed you more? The Canes have seemed to make now a habit out of getting the good end of trades in the Tom Dundon, Don Waddell, Rod Brind'Amour era. Which trade impressed you more? Getting Brent Burns, like you said, potential future Hall of Famer? For merely Steven Lorenz, a goalie prospect, and I think some other future considerations. Or getting Pacioretty and Dylan Coughlin for just future considerations.

Which one impressed you more? Actually, the joke to be made is that they literally gave up nothing for Pacioretty and Coughlin. Zero.

Future considerations is a euphemism. I don't even know what, there's no player to be named later. What are they going to give Santa, rather Vegas? Like a steak dinner? Will they send you a tailgate package?

Sure. A super tailgate package for Pacioretty and Coughlin. But the Burns trade, because I think there was a lot of competition to bring in Brent Burns.

I think there were other teams involved. Not that you had to give up a ton, but you had to give, I think Steven Lorenz is a pretty good fourth line player. And he's got size, and he's a good four checker. So I don't think the Hurricanes wanted to give up Lorenz, but you're willing to give up Lorenz to get Brent Burns. I also think the goalie prospect is a legit, maybe future, you know, bottom half of the league number one.

He's certainly a tandem goalie, I think. I think McEnany can be good. So they did give up something, you know, the conditional third is what, whatever. It's still going to be a third round pick. So just getting a guy like Brent Burns is more impressive to me. The Pacioretty signing, or basically, is a salary dump by Vegas. But also, Pacioretty only played 39 games last year. So hopefully he'll stay healthy.

If he stays healthy, then he'll be productive. It looked like it was a relationship that was going to be, but at the last minute the wedding was called off. I am, of course, referring to the Hurricanes pursuit of Mason Marchments. What happened there? Was that a big miss for the Canes? And did that, would these other moves have happened anyway? Or did some of these trades happen because they realized they were going to miss on Marchments?

Or how big was it missing out on him? I was really mad that Mason Marchment cheated on the Hurricanes with the Dallas Stars. And ultimately, Carolina was left at the altar there.

Here's the thing. I think Marchment would have been a better player for Carolina than Pacioretty for two reasons. One, I don't know that he's a better offensive player, but he's big and physical and fast. And Carolina really could use somebody like that. On top of it, he would have been here. It would have been a four-year deal for basically exactly what Dallas gave him, $4.5 million a year. And I think Marsh plays in your top six.

So that's a really good player, 27 years old as opposed to 33. And at some point, the Hurricanes are going to have to stop the revolving door. You can't retool your roster every single year. They need a lot of continuity.

Based on where they are, they're just not going to have it. Pacioretty is going to play one year here, and that's it. Hopefully we get a full season out of them.

But Marchment would have been a really, really good player. What's the biggest question right now for the Hurricanes? What's going to happen with Nino Niederreiter, or is it some other free agency or rumored trade out there? I don't think any of their free agents are coming back. Right now, if I was going to handicap which free agent might come back, it might be Ethan there.

I'm not even sure that's going to happen. But I don't think Nino's coming back. There's really no spot for him right now.

There really isn't. Unless they trade Martine Natas, I guess which is possible, but I doubt it. I think they want to keep him.

They look at a value in Natas. Andre Kaush is going to have to play. I don't see room for Nino unless he's going to play for $2 million this year, and I don't see that happening.

I think Nino will find a halfway decent landing spot on a two-year deal somewhere. But I think Carolina needs two NHL defensemen. They need a bottom pair. Again, I'd like to see them add some size to their bottom or middle six.

I love a big body in there who can skate and maybe score a little bit, but I think they need some size. Are those players available in free agency or through trade right now, or is that going to be tough to find? No, I think those players are definitely available certainly through a trade. There's a lot of players, and we can sit here all day and list players, but there's a lot of players who are still available via trade. The free agent pickings are a little slim. But I think there's a lot of players out there that Carolina can engineer a trade for. I always thought that their biggest work was going to be done via the trade route because they don't like to do free agency.

They lost out on Mason Marshman. Maybe they didn't feel like they were willing to go where they had to go to get John Klingberg, who still hasn't signed. But Klingberg's not a third pair, and I don't see them investing a lot of money in another defenseman unless they find a spot to dump Jake Gardner, which they could. But if they buy Jake Gardner out, I don't think they're going to add another legit NHL defenseman. It would be great if they added John Klingberg.

They'd have a great top five. But I don't think that's going to happen. I feel bad the way everybody talks about Jake Gardner. I'm turning into my mom of sports fans of just way too much emotion. I want Jake Gardner to play for the Canes and be the Norris Trophy winner. I want him to have the biggest comeback breakout year ever just because everybody's like, I dumped this guy.

I've got to get rid of it. Worst contract ever. Can't believe the Canes still have him. I hate Jake Gardner. I'm like, oh, man, I feel bad for the guy. I understand what you're saying. Jake's a wonderful guy.

It's probably a contract Carolina should have resigned three years ago. Adam Gold, does Cameron Young hang on and go wire to wire in the open? No, he does not. And by the way, don't screw up my total. Man. Have you seen the total? I know.

It's climbing. It's too much pressure. Like, I don't like you to be that high. I thought about putting something that could wipe you out. I think I had maybe the U.S. women's national team plays tonight and they might be like minus five thousand. And I thought about putting it all on USA.

Don't you dare. Just to win like two dollars. But if Costa Rica pulls the upset, Gold's wiped out. That'd be epic.

That's great radio, man. You need that. You don't need to win five thousand fake units. You need an epic collapse. That's what you need.

I'm doing it. Fake units. They are exactly that.

They are fake units. We've got to get you. We've got to get you apparently 30 minutes across the North Carolina line to the nearest casino that is now cropping up and start getting these things in for real, Gold. Maybe I'll just do the show from Cherokee. You should.

No, no, no, no. You need. Don't do it from Cherokee. You need to go do it from one of these Virginia casinos so that you can like specifically call out the North Carolina General Assembly. You can be like, I'm here.

I could be in Greensboro or Raleigh or Charlotte or wherever, but I'm in Virginia because it's the closest casino I can get to. That's what you need to do. Bipartisan stupidity. There we go. Adam Gold, host of the Adam Gold show, insider for 99.9, the fan on the canes. Check out the Canes Quarter podcast and you can check him out back here tomorrow as apparently more moves are being made. We got a we got a sawchenko now, too, that you can talk about tomorrow. We'll see if any other big news happens. If so, you'll hear about it tomorrow in the Adam Gold show. Appreciate it, dude.

Thanks, brother. If any news breaks during this show, we'll also give it to you. Sawchenko was a goalie signing that happened just before the show. Basically some depth at the goalie position because I think we gave up a goalie prospect and one of the trades. I broke down the trades and the moves with Adam Gold on the other side.

I'll tell you why. I don't know how these moves will be work will work out because you never do in a trade, right? I see people giving the canes good trade grades, but I believe the canes are putting themselves or have put themselves in a position where you should trust their moves.

Much like people do with a certain NFL team. Over the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997, with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina.

It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Canes 25th Anniversary wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching.

When you give them to her, but she wanted confirmation. The Carolina Hurricanes made some moves yesterday. They look good to me.

Yeah, they seem good. Brent Burns, good place, old, but seems good. Heard him on the Zoom call, seemed excited about coming, right? He's played 679 straight games. And one of the problems that I heard from casual fans in the playoffs, Canes need to shoot more. Yeah, he says, I like to shoot. Then Max Pacioretty, we trade almost literally nothing for him. We'll get to that.

This Canes social media team is all over that. And I go quick, I don't know anything about the guy, of course. I go, look, seems like he likes to shoot as well. An elite sniper, I see him described at six 30-point seasons.

Excuse me, six-time 30 goal scorer, not 30 points, 30 goal scorers for Max Pacioretty. So we picked up a bunch of good dudes. So there's every reason to believe these moves might work out. Now, of course, we saw Tony D'Angelo leave, we saw Vincent Trochiak leave. Those are two dudes who contributed heavily to the hurricane success in the past season. So we'll see how it all works out next season.

But there is every reason to have faith and confidence in the team that makes these calls for the Carolina Hurricanes. That involves some combination of these four people and then maybe a few more. Owner Tom Dundon. Yep. General Manager Don Waddell. Yeah. Assistant GM Eric Tulski.

Yes. Sort of was seen as like the smart guy in the room. It's almost like Dundon's the owner and he's got the business decisive savvy to say move or not move, right? Waddell's the hockey guy. He knows the teams, the leagues, the people, the players. He's got the Rolodex. Tulski is like the analytics guy. In the modern world, you want somebody crunching the numbers and saying what's this guy's value and what should we pay for it? And Dundon seems to be in on the strategy of tell me what their value is and then don't pay a dime over it. And then Brendan Moore is the head coach, the guy that's got to say like, yes, I believe this guy could work with or like in the case of Tony D'Angelo. Yes, I think that I've talked to him and I think that he's not going to upset the good team chemistry that we've developed here in Carolina, right? That's sort of somehow it goes.

I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. There are plenty of other people and parts, whatever, but that's kind of the view that you get from it from the outside, right? Again, I don't know about these moves specifically, but for the past three years, a lot, overwhelmingly, the moves the Carolina Hurricanes have made have worked out. And in general, the themes have been along these lines and they remind me of the New England Patriots and the way that people talk about the New England Patriots, where the Patriots make a move or they sign a guy or they sign like an undrafted player to a deal.

Instantly, everybody's like, what did we miss? What what do they know that we don't know because it looks weird or how do they always get to make the smartest move? How are they always like, we've got the same number of assets they could offer.

So I feel like the Carolina Hurricanes in their offseason moves are acting very similarly to what the New England Patriots looks like for the long time under Bill Belichick. And that includes what's one tenet of that? It is figuring out what a person's value is and not overpaying the professional sports as much as it is building a team and X's and O's and camaraderie.

And I'm not discounting all those things. But ultimately, because of the way they try and make professional sports in the United States, they do it differently in other places. They try and make them competitive across the leagues with salary caps, with different rules of how you can, you know, pick and get your place with drafts, with free agency rules, rules that are designed to keep players on certain teams, you know, to give balance to markets, but also to pay superstars. All those things go into play to building a team and not being saddled with a huge contract is a big part of winning, right?

In the NBA, what do you see? Like somebody stuck with a bad Russell Westbrook deal or a bad Dwight Howard deal that hurts the rest of your team because you can't go out and get other guys. In the NFL, same thing. Sometimes you got to pay that quarterback and then that puts you in a bad position. If you go overpay for a running back, that's been like the wisdom they figured out in the NFL. As much as running backs are good, they're only worth so much because you can find another guy that's just 21 and fast as lightning and he may not be as good as the dude, but you can pay him $500,000 a year instead of $50 million a year and then you can be good at the other positions, right? Why were the Seahawks so good for the first couple years? Because they had one of the best quarterbacks in the league, Russell Wilson, at a very low deal allowing for big deals everywhere else.

Cheap rookie contract. That also involves, the Patriots are good at this, not falling in love with dudes, right? Obviously, you want to care about players, you want to treat them right, but when it comes to building your team, you have to say, this is a guy's value and there is no, well, we like you, so we'll pay you 20% more, right?

You just, you can't do it. There might be a little wiggle room here and there, you know, maybe the team even determines, all right, we've got $2 million of emotional money to play with. We'll pay a guy an extra half a million dollars because he's been our captain for whatever many years, right?

But you got to let dudes know, figure out what your value is, that's what we're doing and we've got to pay you at your value. The other thing that you see them doing, we talked specifically about this with Rod Brind'Amour a week ago. They like draft picks. Draft picks are two things. One, they're capital in trades where you don't have to give up players you like, right? You're like, okay, you can give up draft picks that other teams might need and when it comes to the draft, when you're not picking in the top 10 or 15, where you're almost certain what you're going to get out of a guy, you've got a guy that you're going to draft and he's going to be in the league in two years. When you're drafting in the second, third or fourth round, they admit there's some luck involved, so we're going to do our research and instead of picking three guys in those middle rounds, we're going to try to pick six guys in those middle rounds and our odds get better that one or two of them turn into top line players in the next five years or whatever. So not paying anybody over their value, amassing draft picks and then using those assets and being smart in trades.

That's the other one that you see on display this week. And not being afraid to let guys go. Yeah, I mean that goes into knowing what somebody's value is, much like not ever paying for somebody, not worrying about, if you're getting value back, not worrying about, I don't want to part with a guy that we like on our team, right? Like for example, Vincent Trojcek signed a seven-year deal. It's like, okay, for the first three years of that deal, okay, good, but the final four years of that deal, I don't think are going to be that great at all. It's a lot of money to be paying a guy who's probably going to be your third line center. In these trades, when they've got prospects or whatever to give up, they seem to be good at identifying, there's another thing I feel like the Patriots do, identifying the teams that are in trouble cap-wise, right? The reason they went to the Knights, and they're apparently not the only ones on this, the Knights have mismanaged some assets.

They've overpaid and overtraded, and now they've got to move some guys. That's why basically, Max Pacioretty and Dylan Coughlin, they were traded for future considerations. And it was so, the joke was how little they gave up, that the Canes social media team, always on their game, even sent out a thanks and goodbye tweet to the future considerations. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically, any time a player gets traded or signs away from the Canes that used to play for them, almost every time, the Canes send some acknowledgement of thanks to that player, we enjoyed his time in rally, a couple pictures of him. Happened with Vincent Trojcek, right?

You put up a couple pictures, hey, thanks Vincent for the time. With a Canes social media team, put up just a little Canes logo instead of a picture of someone who just said future considerations and said thank you to the future considerations for your time with the Canes. Your impact for the Canes will never be forgotten.

Yes, and it was basically a joke on how little they gave up to go to cash-strapped Vegas and get these other two players. The Canes look like they're doing things like the New England Patriots. Now in the NHL, we don't see as often, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, you don't see a lot of, the Lightning have been the biggest dynasty in the past couple years, they were only able to win like two in a row, right? It's rare that you're going to see an NHL team go on a run of five or six championships in a decade or twelve year span, but the Hurricanes, their off-season being compared to the Patriots, not quite translating yet on the ice, but when you put yourself in the playoff every year and you continually get to the later rounds as they have three out of the last four years, well then you just up your chances that it will become your year and you'll go home with the cup. Again, so they'll need to back up their off-season moves. Ultimately, off-season moves only matter if they get your championships, right? But if they get a Stanley Cup or they go to two Cup Finals in three years or whatever, it'll validate that they are one of the best off-season teams and they have been in this Dundon-Brenda Moore era.

This is the Adam Gold Show. Over the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997, with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Cane's Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Cane's 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.