RALEIGH — This week, the final days leading up to the NHL trade deadline, is not easy.
“Unless you have a no-move, anyone’s game,” Hurricanes center Mark Jankowski said, “and it could happen to anyone.”
Jankowski would know. Last year, he said the Predators — the organization with which he had spent the previous two-plus seasons — could sense changes were coming. Buried near the bottom of the standings despite an offseason spending spree, Nashville was poised to be a seller.
“You hear some names, but honestly, I never really saw my name,” Jankowski said. “I don’t really pay attention to that stuff anyway, but no one told me anything or I never really saw anything with my name, so I wasn’t really worried too much about it.
“And then, obviously, I got the call, and everything changed. Everything happened so quick.”
Word that Jankowski had been traded to Carolina for a fifth round draft pick came so late that Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky had already held his post-deadline availability with the media while the Jankowski trade sat in the queue awaiting final approval from the league.
“So that was another reason why I didn’t think anything was happening. It was two hours past,” Jankowski said of the late notice. “But I guess those things take time to process through the registry or whatever. But I ended up getting on a flight that night. I had to pack as much as I could right away and got here pretty quickly.”
Jankowski’s transition to Carolina went as well as it could have. He scored two goals on two shots in his debut two days later, and in his first 10 games with the Hurricanes, he found the back of the net seven times — on only 11 shots on goal.
Now, a year later, players around the NHL are wondering if they’ll be among those dealt before Friday at 3 p.m.
“Obviously, yeah, that’s coming up pretty soon here,” Hurricanes center Logan Stankoven said. “So it is going to be a hot topic amongst everyone.”
Like Jankowski, Stankoven was caught off guard when he was traded to Carolina as part of the blockbuster trade that sent Mikko Rantanen to Dallas at last year’s deadline.
“I think just with having to go through what I went through last year, it was hard,” Stankoven said. “Obviously, everything turned out for the better, but it was hard at that time to go through that. I was blindsided by it. I did not see it coming. And I’m just really pumped to be here again. I think things worked out in a great way.”
The Hurricanes, among the teams near the top of the league standings, are poised to again be buyers. But as Stankoven learned last year and Jankowski said, anyone without contractual protection can be traded whether they are on a buyer or a seller.
“That’s coming up pretty soon here,” Stankoven said. “So it is going to be a hot topic amongst everyone.”
The Hurricanes have been mentioned among several of the bigger available names. That includes a handful of centers — Vincent Trocheck, Robert Thomas, Elias Pettersson, Nazem Kadri and Ryan O’Reilly — and Carolina has certainly checked in on every player they feel could help them in their quest to get past the Eastern Conference final and within reach of the franchise’s second Stanley Cup.
Fortunately for all the anxious and fretting players and their families, this year’s deadline hasn’t had the buildup of previous years thanks to the Olympic break. After going three weeks without a game, Carolina returned to the ice with just over a week to the deadline. What is usually weeks of reports and social media banter was whittled down to fewer than 10 days.
“It’s the trade deadline — it happens every year, every team, so you just can’t really be focused on that,” Jankowski said.
By Friday afternoon, the Hurricanes may acquire a player who forces a fourth-liner like Jankowski out of the lineup or even to another city. And a deal for one of the bigger aforementioned names may require a young and talented player — perhaps Stankoven — to be on the move yet again.
“You can’t really control that and just control what you can control in the locker room and go from there,” Jankowski said.
And make sure your phone is on — even if it’s a couple of hours after 3 p.m.
