Hurricanes General Manager Eric Tulsky Explains What Happened With Mikko Rantanen

Hurricanes General Manager Eric Tulsky Explains What Happened With Mikko Rantanen

Before I begin here, can we just hand out some flowers to Jeff Marek? He’s just an incredible storyteller and does such a great job with this stuff. He’s an incredible addition to Daily Faceoff and they’re lucky to have him. If you haven’t checked out this episode below featuring Paul Bissonnette, Eric Tulsky, and the wanna-be Charles Barkley on Morning Cuppa Hockey, make sure to check it out.

Credit to Tulsky for not hiding. Other than that, I’m not sure that he deserves credit for anything that transpired with Mikko Rantanen. The Canes GM did his best to explain what happened with Rantanen.

Transcribed by Daily Faceoff.com:

Marek: “We’ll start sort of reverse pyramid here; a general thought on what happened before we get into specifics. What, from your chair, do you think people need to understand that perhaps they don’t?”

Tulsky: “Big picture, we want to be aggressive. We want to take swings. We had a chance to acquire the kind of player you can’t normally get your hands on, so we took our shot. We knew he was not going to sign an extension the day we traded for him. We had reason to believe that maybe we were right, or maybe we were wrong, but we had reason to believe we had a decent chance of getting it done. He came in; he decided it wasn’t for him and that’s been pretty rare for us. We had time to move on and still end up okay with a player we’re really happy with.”

Marek: “I don’t know that I’ve heard someone specifically say, ‘I want out of Carolina, I don’t want to be here.’ That’s why this sort of story that’s popped up here kind of rings a little bit hollow to me, Eric.”

Tulsky: “We’ve had to let a lot of people go because we’ve had a really good team, and the salary cap makes it hard to keep everyone. But I don’t know that we’ve had anybody who wanted to leave unless it was somebody who felt like they were blocked. That happens occasionally, but even then, not very often. For the most part, guys who are here want to be here. 

“We talked about Slavin earlier. He just signed a long-term extension at a number designed to help us keep building around him. We’ve had people do that because they like it here, and they want to be part of it, and they want to help us.

“It’s a personal thing. Every individual makes their own choice, and some people like the bustle of Canada, some people like warmer weather and climates, and some people like small towns where they can raise a family. Some people want an urban metropolis. Whatever reasons he had for deciding this wasn’t the fit for him, that’s okay, but no, it’s not something that happens all the time. 

“People keep connecting it to [Jake] Guentzel. A very similar situation in one way – we traded for him knowing he wouldn’t sign an extension the day we traded for him because he had been with one team his whole career – that was where his mind was. He didn’t have his head around signing anywhere else right away. He came in, he got to know us, and he really liked it. He wanted to be here, and that’s what happens most of the time, but we couldn’t get that one done because we had salary cap issues. 

“We had a couple of big-name free agents coming up, and we were really tight against it, and we needed some time to figure out what we actually had available. Obviously, in retrospect, it would have been great just to get that one done and figure out the other stuff, but we were trying to fit everything and trying to make the team as good as we could.”

To close things out, I just want to address some of the things Tulsky said during the interview because I have a huge problem with several things that he said.

A: The line of “been pretty rare for us” in terms of players not wanting to be in Carolina. How tone deaf can you be? Jake Guentzel just left because you botched that situation and offered him a reasonable contract extension too late. Not to mention the fact that Vincent Trocheck and Dougie Hamilton left in free agency for nothing after Carolina didn’t even bother to try to keep them. Oh, and Martin Necas made it clear he had no interest in staying long term.

“Been pretty rare for us”. I just named several examples totally contradicting that statement. Try again, nerd.

B: Rantanen left because you never gave him a reason to stay. The conversation of Carolina flipping him started almost immediately after the original deal. If Carolina actually wanted to have a chance to keep Rantanen, they should have shut those rumors down immediately. They didn’t and therefore, he responded accordingly.

C: Using Jaccob Slavin as an example is comical. The extension Slavin signed for is comically low to the point where he should fire his agent. If you’re going to use an example of a player signing an extension with the team, maybe don’t use the one who signed for far less than he could have gotten when you’re referencing a superstar who decided not to stay.

This entire interview screams a lack of self-awareness. This is why teams continue to suffer the consequences when you employ nerds who don’t have the slightest clue of how to be a real leader of an organization.

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