In one of a few trade deadline moves made by the Carolina Hurricanes, Brady Skjei was acquired from New York, in exchange for a first-round pick in this summer’s draft.
At the time, the Hurricanes were dealing with injuries to two of their top three defensemen in Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce. On top of that, Jake Gardiner, who was signed in the offseason, hadn’t worked out too well and Joel Edmundson wasn’t really meant to take on a large role.
Skjei is a solid fit to complete the team’s top-four on the back end and has the opportunity to play under a great top pairing of Dougie Hamilton and Jaccob Slavin, with an extremely defensively reliable partner in Brett Pesce. It’s a pretty great setup for him.
He’s also still just 26 years old and comes with four years left on his contract at a reasonable cap hit. But even though he may have quite a few years left on his deal, there’s a chance those years won’t be played in Carolina.
It’s extremely likely that next year, the Hurricanes lose a defenseman in the expansion draft. At most, they’ll probably be able to protect one of Skjei, Jake Bean or Haydn Fleury. I also don’t see Carolina being able to pay any price to get a team to steer clear of not one but two young defensemen.
Before the acquisition of Skjei, there was a good chance the Hurricanes may have been able to protect either Bean or Fleury. In a year from now, they’ll have a good idea of which defenseman is more valuable and whether they’d be willing to pay a price to keep Seattle away from the other. Now, there’s just no way they keep all of their defensemen. Either they’ll lose Skjei or they'll lose the better defenseman of Bean or Fleury because they’ll be protecting Skjei.
I’m not questioning how Skjei will fit with the Hurricanes, I’m saying it was quite a price to pay for what could be just a year and a half of his services. Considering how deep this year’s draft is as well, there’s a good chance that pick will turn into a quality NHL player. It's also very likely that either Bean or Fleury, if not both, will turn into capable top-four defenders in a year or two. If either is to become a top-four defenseman, it would create a logjam for the Hurricanes on the left side, even if they were theoretically able to protect them all.
With the expansion draft just a year away, every team will need to start thinking about how moves will affect their protection list. With this deal, it seems that either the Hurricanes weren’t considering the draft when making the trade or were willing to pay too much for a short-term benefit.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted this weekend):
Was giving up a first-round pick for Brady Skjei the right move?
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