For the second straight year, the Carolina Hurricanes are taking a significant swing to bolster a perennial playoff team.
The Hurricanes acquired forwards Mikko Rantanen from the Colorado Avalanche and Taylor Hall from the Chicago Blackhawks in a three-team trade Friday night. In the deal, they sent forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury, as well as a second-round pick in this year’s draft and a fourth-rounder in 2026, to the Avalanche.
The Blackhawks reclaimed a third-round pick for this year’s draft and took on half of Rantanen’s salary.
The 28-year-old Rantanen, a two-time 100-point scorer who had an Avs-record 55 goals in 2022-23, is the headliner in the trade. He had spent his entire NHL career with Colorado after being drafted 10th overall in 2015, but he was in line to become an unrestricted free agent next season after he and the organization couldn’t agree on a new deal entering this year.
“Mikko is one of the premier power forwards in our sport,” Carolina first-year general manager Eric Tulsky said in a statement. “It’s no secret that we’ve wanted to add elite skill to our lineup, and this is a player who should fit our system and locker room well. And Taylor gives us another high-skill option to bolster our attack.”
The Hurricanes have made the playoffs for six straight years, with two of those pushes reaching the Eastern Conference Final. But they’re still looking for a breakthrough to the Stanley Cup Final in this current run under coach Rod Brind’Amour, the captain on Carolina’s 2006 Cup winner.
They had tried to address a multi-year weakness when it came to high-end finishers last year by acquiring scoring forward Jake Guentzel before the trade deadline. But after a second-round playoff exit, Carolina ended up dealing his rights to Tampa Bay shortly before Guentzel’s expected departure in free agency.
Now, they’re adding Rantanen, who has a $9.25 million cap hit for this year, to a team sitting in second in the conference with 63 points, behind league leader Washington (71).
Carolina also adds a former Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP in the 33-year-old Hall, who missed most of last season due to right knee surgery. Hall was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft who had 39 goals and 54 assists for New Jersey en route to winning the Hart for the 2017-18 season.
Hall, who is making $6 million this year with free agency looming, has nine goals and 15 assists in 46 games.
The deal marks the end of Necas’ tenure with the team that drafted him in the first round in 2017. The 26-year-old, a skilled offensive player with 16 goals and 39 assists for a team-best 55 points this year, signed a two-year deal, $13 million contract in July to avoid an arbitration hearing.
The 24-year-old Drury, a former second-round draft pick, had 15 goals in 153 regular-season games with Carolina. They join an Avalanche team battling for position in the wild-card race of the Western Conference, while the Blackhawks – sitting next to last in the league with 35 points – now have nine selections in this year’s draft.
Carolina also acquired the rights to forward propsect Nils Juntorp in the deal, which comes as the NHL approaches its 4 Nations tournament break. There’s also just more than a month before the league’s trade deadline on March 7.
Teams are attempting to get a jump on the trade market with tightly contested races in both conferences. Trade talk had heightened, too, with speculation surrounding Vancouver shopping forward J.T. Miller.
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Associated Press Hockey Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York; and freelance writer Tim Cronin in Chicago contributed to this report,
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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
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