The Doctor behind the Hurricanes, GM Eric Tulsky’s bold moves are paying off — with even bolder ones ahead

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RALEIGH, N.C. — It was Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the puck would drop on Game 7 of the Toronto Maple Leafs-Florida Panthers series and Eric Tulsky would learn which team his Carolina Hurricanes would play in the Eastern Conference final.

Asked how his nerves were as he waited, the Hurricanes’ first-year general manager, chuckled: “I don’t stress very easily.”

Not a shock.

Tulsky, who went to Harvard and has his PhD in chemistry from Cal Berkeley, is in his 11th year with the team but is a scientist by trade and comes across as Steady Eddie. There’s a reason some around the organization kiddingly call him “Doctor.”

And considering what Dr. Tulsky went through this season — acquiring Mikko Rantanen from the Colorado Avalanche and then having to trade the pending unrestricted free agent to the Dallas Stars when Rantanen declined to sign a contract extension — it’s a good thing Tulsky doesn’t “stress very easily” because that was the kind of pressure that could have cratered even the most senior of GMs.

Many figured the rookie GM screwed up by making such a gamble. But in the end, Tulsky, like a gutsy poker player, was saved when he calmly connected on an inside straight on the river.

“I wasn’t worried about it at all, honestly,” Tulsky told The Athletic. “Look, truthfully, there were no bad outcomes there. The worst-case scenario was we didn’t see a trade we liked, and we kept him, and we had a good playoff run with him. He would’ve helped us a lot in this playoff run, and then we would see what happens at the end of the year, and that wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

“The only question was whether we could find a trade partner who was willing to offer something up that was more attractive to us than that, and we did.”

The Hurricanes acquired Rantanen in January for a package that included Martin Necas and Jack Drury — and also brought 2018 Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall to Raleigh. That gave Tulsky a couple of months before the trade deadline to try to sign Rantanen, then rectify the situation if he needed to use Rantanen as a rental of his own.

Several teams pursued Rantanen, but many of the offers were solely futures. Tulsky inquired about Toronto Maple Leafs star Mitch Marner, but Marner wouldn’t waive his no-move. Dallas was a team in hot pursuit, and once Rantanen agreed to extend his contract with the Stars at the tune of $12 million annually over eight years ($500,000 less per year than Carolina’s offer), the deal was set. The Hurricanes got forward Logan Stankoven, two conditional first-round picks and two third-round picks.

Stankoven, a second-year pro about to play in his second straight conference final, has been an impact player for the Canes, as has Hall, who also re-signed for three more years.

Like any good, player at the green felt, Tulsky’s poker face isn’t showing much — but you know it has to be gratifying that after taking a risk like that, the Hurricanes are still kicking and have a chance to end the season of the defending Stanley Cup champs in the league’s semifinal.

“I’m very comfortable with where the team ended up,” Tulsky said. “I think the team we exited the year with had a group of players who are all a really good fit for the way we play, and all are really bought into what we want to do. That’s a big part of what makes us effective. The way we play requires that sort of uniform buy-in, and setting aside what happened in the middle of the year, I think we exited the year with a group of players who are an outstanding fit for the way we want to play.”

Rantanen, after a slow end to the regular season with Dallas, has erupted in the playoffs and leads all NHLers with nine goals — one more than Carolina star Andrei Svechnikov — and 19 points. He looks a lot different than he did in scoring twice in 13 games with the Canes.

And is Tulsky hinting that Rantanen didn’t conform to the way Rod Brind’Amour wants his Canes to play?

The GM wasn’t about to throw more shade. Instead, he focused on what Stankoven and Hall have added to the Canes.

“They’ve added a lot of scoring punch and grit to our game,” Tulsky said. “That’s a combination that’s important to us. We play a very forecheck-heavy attack, and we need guys who can get in on the forecheck and be disruptive and create off of it, but we need to couple that with skill. You can’t just forecheck to get the puck and then do nothing with it.

“Bringing in two players like that who are aggressive and strong and can play along the walls but also have the skill to create once we get the turnovers, that’s what makes this team go.”

This is Carolina’s seventh consecutive playoff appearance and third trip to the conference final during that streak. Plenty of teams would trade places in a nanosecond.

Yes, the Canes want to get over the hump and advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2006 — but the consistency that this organization has shown, especially with Brind’Amour at the helm, has been impressive.

Before replacing his longtime boss, Don Waddell, as GM this season, Tulsky was an analyst, director of analytics and assistant GM. And he hasn’t just stayed the course. While the team’s core has been around for a while, Tulsky brought in more than a half-dozen new players this season and said those players “have had a phenomenal hit rate.”

He said he would never expect seven to 10 new players to all fit like a glove, but the front office’s goal is to find players who fit Brind’Amour’s mold, and this group was made to play Hurricanes hockey.

“We had as much turnover as any team in the league, and each of the years before that we had a lot of turnover,” Tulsky said. “We have just been really fortunate that our staff continues to find players who can step in, and our coaching staff continues to be effective at integrating them. I think it’s about the alignment between the coaching staff and the front office.

“Rod has the team playing a very distinctive style that is very aggressive and requires very specific skills from players and a certain attitude from players. The front office has really focused on finding players who can play that way and who we can bring in and expect to see and thrive. Our pro scouting staff has really focused on identifying players who we think will look better here than they would somewhere else.”

“It’s a credit to the scouting staff, it’s a credit to the management group, it’s a credit to the coaching staff that we are able to identify those players and bring them in and that the coaching staff can integrate them and not miss a beat.”

Sometimes, a GM can feel helpless in the playoffs. The roster is set, and all you can do is sit back, watch and hope.

But Tulsky and his staff are hard at work behind the scenes, planning for the future. In a month, maybe this story ends with Tulsky lifting the Stanley Cup high above his shoulders, but complacency is not in his nature. Listening to him talk, listening to Brind’Amour forecast that “sexy” players are coming and knowing how motivated owner Tom Dundon is to add stars to the Carolina lineup, you know Tulsky’s got some more cards he hopes to pull from the deck.

He went for Rantanen. He went for Marner. And he’s got cap space in the coming years.

“Our goal is always to get better,” Tulsky said. “The easiest thing in the world to do in my situation is to just sit back and let it play out and maybe you get there and maybe not, but you can’t really be criticized for not doing stuff if you have a good team and just wait and see. I don’t want to take the easy way out. I want to keep pushing and taking swings and trying to get better. We’ve built a team that is very, very deep, and it is hard to get better by tinkering at the bottom of a deep lineup.

“The way we get better from here is by finding high-end players who can improve the top half of our lineup, and that was the idea behind the swing we took in middle of the season.”

Not that Tulsky doesn’t think this lineup can win it all.

When the Canes were in the Eastern Conference final two years ago against Florida and had trouble scoring, Svechnikov was shelved with a season-ending torn ACL. He’s healthy this time and playing the best the Canes have ever seen him in the playoffs.

Sebastian Aho can hurt an opponent in all situations. Seth Jarvis, as former Hurricanes forward Jake Guentzel told The Athletic last spring, “has the whole world in his hands.” Defenseman Jaccob Slavin, as displayed during the 4 Nations Face-Off, may have the best stick in the NHL and could cause problems for Florida’s deep forward group. And he seems to have revitalized former Norris Trophy-winning partner Brent Burns, who was on the ice for only one goal against in the second round (an empty-netter).

And then there’s oft-maligned goalie Freddie Andersen, who has been superb in the playoffs (7-1, 1.36 goals-against average and .937 save percentage) after Tulsky considered but ultimately did not tinker with the team’s goaltending in advance of the trade deadline.

“He’s been incredible,” Tulsky said. “I think through his career, he has been on a lot of teams where he played pretty well and the team didn’t advance and whether fairly or not, that got hung on him sometimes. But if you go back and look through what he did, there’s a lot of times he won Game 3 of a series, 2-1 and won Game 4 1-0 and then lost Game 7 and got blamed for the team not advancing.

“He’s had a good career, both regular season and playoffs.”

As Aho said Monday, “to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best,” and the Canes are hungry. Brind’Amour feels the reigning Cup champs are actually better than last season with the additions of Brad Marchand and Seth Jones.

But after the Canes felt they deserved better in getting swept by the Panthers in the 2023 East final, Tulsky is anxious to see if the team he helped assemble is up to the challenge.

“People’s careers are not that long, and you don’t get that many opportunities to win in this league,” he said. “Everybody knows that every single year is precious, and you want to make sure you do everything you can to put yourself in position to win a championship. That series two years ago, I think we felt like we played very, very well, and every one of those games could have gone either way. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way, and that’s tough.

“You’ve just get back to it next year and hope to put yourself in that position again.”

The Canes are in that position yet again. But Dr. Tulsky is hardly stressed.

(Top photo of Tom Dundon, Eric Tulsky and Rod Brind’Amour: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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