The smoke continues to clear from the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline and it is becoming more obvious that the Carolina Hurricanes should not have traded for Mikko Rantanen in the first place.
Dierks Bentley’s first single, “What Was I Thinkin’? ” sums it up best. That is what everyone is asking about regarding the initial trade on January 24th. Even Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour continued the trend of honesty among managers and coaches throughout the NHL by stating that Mikko Rantanen did not want to be there in the first place.
“There’s not been one guy that has left here because they didn’t like it here. That was, except for Mikko, and he did not like it. When he showed up, he said, ‘There’s four teams I’ll go play for, but you’re not one of them,’” Brind’Amour said. “So there’s 28 other teams he wasn’t going to, and the better question is, should we have known that before we signed him, Or attempted to sign him?”
Trade Deadline Fallout: Mikko Rantanen – Why Dallas and Not Carolina?
This is a very good question. According to Hurricanes General Manager Eric Tulsky, who spoke to Pierre LeBrun of the Athletic back in January after the trade, Tulsky stated the seed was planted in the summer. Still, things didn’t really pick up again until six to eight weeks before the trade.
“It was not very serious until probably six, eight weeks ago,” Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky said to LeBrun. “We started getting into conversations about what a deal might look like. There was a lot of back and forth about what we could do. What we needed. In the end, we really got down to brass tacks in the last week or two. And hammered it out yesterday (Friday, January 24th).”
It was a shocking trade: Rantanen was traded from the Colorado Avalanche to the Carolina Hurricanes via the Chicago Blackhawks for retention purposes. Carolina sent Martin Necas and Jack Drury to Carolina. But somewhere along the way, the message got lost. It was clear he did not want to go to Carolina and play in Carolina long-term.
NHL Trade: Mikko Rantanen Traded to Dallas Stars from Carolina
The Hurricanes were the only team that could sign him to an eight-year term before trading him to the Dallas Stars on March 7th, the Trade Deadline. But you could tell Rantanen never got comfortable in Brind’Amour’s system. Tulsky was banking on Rantanen loving the city and playing for the coach, especially with his Team Finland buddy Sebastian Aho there. But it never took, and he never wanted to be traded from Colorado.
And while the Canes reportedly made competitive offers, reports are between $12-$14 million, Rantanen knew that this style was not for him. It was a big risk that did not pay off for Tulsky. While Tulsky is comfortable with the way things worked out in the end,
“He’s a very good player, and having him with the team (for the rest of the season) would have been a perfectly fine outcome,” Tulsky explained after Friday’s trade deadline. “Having him for a Cup run would have been good. Maybe we win the Cup with him. We had to weigh that against what we could get in a trade. If the trade offers hadn’t been there, then we wouldn’t have done it. … When you move him out, that’s a loss for the current year. … (But) we felt like we were getting enough in this deal that it was the right thing for the organization long term. We’re comfortable with the way it ended up.”
However, if you think about it for a minute, the trade never made sense. Even the head coach knows it. While hindsight is always 20/20, maybe they should have gotten the contract extension in place first, before making the trade. Not to mention, he had an idea Carolina was not the place for him.
“So Mikko was the only one that I’ve been associated with that said, I don’t want to, this is not for me, and I think there’s other circumstances on that,” Brind’Amour added. “It’s not because of the hockey, it’s because I think his family, it wasn’t for him. So good, and I appreciate that he let us know that. We probably shouldn’t have known that before we made the deal.”
Again, it is easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback or, in this case, Monday Morning General Manager, but people at the time thought Rantanen’s move to the Canes did not make sense. Heck, even former Hurricanes and now Avalanche Martin Necas knew signing him would be a problem.
“It’s a tough position for them, they probably should’ve known that he would sign in Carolina if he gets there,” Necas said.
Maybe, just maybe, as the Vince Gill song “You Better Think Twice ” goes, the Hurricanes should have thought twice before making the trade for Mikko Rantanen in the first place.
