RALEIGH — The seemingly inevitable became a reality Friday afternoon when the Hurricanes finally traded defenseman Ethan Bear hours before he was set to be a healthy scratch for the 21st straight game.
Carolina dealt Bear and depth forward Lane Pederson to Vancouver in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the 2023 draft. The Hurricanes retained $400,000, a little more than 18%, of Bear’s $2.2 million contract that expires after this season.
Bear played 58 games last season after being acquired from Edmonton in the summer of 2021 for Warren Foegele, totaling five goals and nine assists.
He started the 2021-22 season alongside Jaccob Slavin on Carolina’s top pair but caught COVID-19 in late November. After being isolated in a San Jose hotel, Bear returned to the team but lost his spot alongside Slavin to Tony DeAngelo. He never really regained his form, battling for ice time on the Hurricanes’ third pairing.
The 25-year-old was a healthy scratch for all 14 of Carolina’s playoff games last season, last playing in the team’s regular season finale.
The Hurricanes entered training camp with four defensemen battling for two spots on the third pairing. Jalen Chatfield seized one spot, playing in all of Carolina’s first six games, while one of Calvin de Haan and Dylan Coghlan played opposite him.
Bear, meanwhile, was a healthy scratch in the season’s first two weeks, and ongoing trade rumors heated up as the team opted to put Jordan Martinook on waivers to maximize their long-term injured reserve space rather than Bear. Martinook cleared waivers, as the team expected, and that allowed Carolina to keep Bear on the roster and shop him around the league without having other teams trying to exploit a bad cap situation.
Bear said during preseason that the trade speculation, which started in the offseason, wasn’t affecting him.
“I don’t think it was hard at all. I’m kind of used to it now at his point,” said Bear, who was also the subject of rumors when he was with the Oilers in the lead-up to his trade to Carolina. “My name gets put out there a lot. It’s kind of just everyday life nowadays.”
On Thursday, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour admitted it was a difficult position for Bear.
“It’s tough for him,” Brind’Amour said. “We understand that, I guess, we just have a lot of quality defensemen on this team, which is a great thing to have. … So it’s tough on him. I understand that, but it’s just how it is.”
It culminated in Friday’s trade, which also sent 25-year-old Pederson to the Canucks. Pederson, acquired in the trade that brought Brent Burns to Carolina, had no points in four games with the AHL’s Chicago Wolves.
The Hurricanes now have nine draft picks in the 2023 NHL Draft. Carolina holds all its own picks except its third-round selection, but it also has Philadelphia’s third-rounder, Vancouver’s fifth and Chicago’s sixth.
