There still may be a few buzzer-beater deadline trades the ‘Canes haven’t announced yet, but right now it seems as though the team has traded away everyone…except those it said it was trading away. As of right now, Ray Whitney is still a ‘Cane despite rampant trade rumors to the contrary. Scott Walker and Joe Corvo are now members of the NHL-leading Washington Capitals, Aaron Ward is a Duck, Andrew Alberts is reportedly a Canuck and Stephane Yelle is floating out there in nowhere land, but he’s not with Carolina anymore.
Jim Rutherford did what he wanted – dumping dead weight and salary for draft picks. Carolina now owns the second round of the 2010 entry draft. Through various trades, the team now has at least 10 second-round picks. The Ducks re-gifted Justin Pogge to Carolina (wasn’t he a Maple Leaf, what…two or three weeks ago?) and the surging Hurricanes got Brian Pothier for Corvo. Poor Scott Walker got pawned off for what might very well be the last pick in the entire draft this year, but he’s off to a team with a very real chance of winning the cup. They might as well have called it “future considerations” for all the value a seventh-round pick usually has.
In minor news, every player Carolina signed in the offseason is now elsewhere except for Tom Kostopoulos. Ward and Yelle never seemed to mesh well with the team and were always a step behind, so chalk the whole Bruins exodus up to a failed experiment. Alberts was exactly as billed. He added needed grit but turned the puck over frequently, and wasn’t somebody the Hurricanes couldn’t stand to part with. The writing was on the wall for the perpetually injured Walker, but no one will ever forget his contributions to the ‘Canes’ 2009 playoff run.
The buzz on the web is that Rutherford wanted more for Whitney than anyone was willing to give – a first rounder and a solid NHL player, not a prospect. Maybe it just didn’t work out. We’ll know for sure in a few hours.
