When it was known that the Hurricanes would be acquiring a pair of first-round picks as part of their return for Mikko Rantanen, the fact the deal wasn’t officially finalized until close to the trade deadline complicated Carolina’s efforts on that front.
However, it appears as if they made an effort to flip one of those picks to get some win-now help as Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK and The Athletic recently reported (Twitter link) that the Hurricanes are believed to have tried to make a run at adding Canucks winger Brock Boeser just before the deadline with one of those newly-acquired first rounders potentially in the offer.
The idea of adding Boeser certainly would have made a lot of sense from Carolina’s standpoint to help fill the void vacated by Rantanen and Martin Necas before the initial swap with Colorado. While the 28-year-old isn’t necessarily as offensively gifted as Rantanen or Necas, he has been a pretty reliable scorer throughout his career. Boeser isn’t on his way to his second straight 40-goal season but he has 18 goals and 20 helpers through 57 games which would have made him a good fit on the second line for the Hurricanes.
Of course, with Vancouver still squarely in the mix for a playoff spot in the West, it’s understandable why a futures-based return for one of their top wingers wouldn’t have been appealing to GM Patrik Allvin. Even when they moved J.T. Miller, they quickly flipped the first-round pick to Pittsburgh for two players who were quickly signed to contract extensions as they continued to operate with a win-now mindset. With that in mind, it’s reasonable to infer that if Boeser were to be moved, Allvin’s preference would have been a player-for-player type of swap over a futures-based offer like Carolina’s.
Dhaliwal also notes that the Canucks took a late run at trying to get Boeser signed to a contract extension. The only reported offer that’s out there was a five-year, $40MM proposal from earlier in the season; it’s unclear how much their new offer differed from their original but with a big jump coming in the salary cap, Boeser’s camp likely feels that they’ll be able to beat that on the open market this summer if a new deal with Vancouver isn’t reached by then. And if that doesn’t happen, there’s probably a good chance that the Hurricanes will be among the teams calling on July 1st.