Tһe Cаrolіnа Hurrісаnes Must Retаіn Jаke Guentzel

What we see here is not that Guentzel’s impact made Aho or his line statistically more offensively dangerous at 5-on-5, but that it made him all the more dominant overall.

It’s hard to explain exactly why this is, as Guentzel’s reputation was by no means built on defensive excellence, but the fact is clear that Aho’s line conceded far, far less in the way of expected goals and high danger chances once Guentzel was placed there.

This is an outlier in Aho’s career, too. In that aforementioned rookie season, largely spent with Staal and Teravainen, Aho was out for 8.78 high danger chances against per 60 minutes.

Since that year, the lowest mark of his career was 10.47 in the covid-shortened 2020-2021 season, which was entirely played against less than stellar competition. This is a mark he has not approached since he spent significant time playing with a peak-of-his-powers Jordan Staal.

It would be easy to write this off as a hot stretch of overall play over a 17-game stretch against a soft end-of-season schedule, but the fact that it extended into the playoffs

It’s also worth noting on the production side of things that those P/60 numbers are skewed by the fact that Aho did not record a single 5-on-5 secondary assist after Guentzel was acquired in the regular season or playoffs. ALL of his 5-on-5 assists were primaries. That’s straight up fluky, and reason to believe that slight P/60 dip is just noise.

As the face of this franchise and unquestioned top forward for this era, Aho has always been a dominant force at even strength, both in terms of driving play and putting up points.

Never has he done this as a center and contributed to super-low quality against numbers until Guentzel showed up.

The Contract

Now it’s time for the cold water.

Under Tom Dundon, Don Waddell, and Eric Tulsky, the Hurricanes’ decision-making process has been oriented around avoiding paying regrettable contracts to veteran players.

The braintrust allowed Dougie Hamilton to walk after the 2020-2021 season, and they allowed Vincent Trocheck to do the same the following year.

On the whole, this is smart and good process that in theory allows a talented core to remain competitive while avoiding a risk of devoting significant cap resources to a player who becomes a non or negative asset.

Now, Waddell is gone to Columbus, and it’s been reported that Guentzel is likely headed to free agency and that the Hurricanes are shopping his rights for a mid-round pick.

It’s impossible to know where Guentzel’s motivations lie or what the Hurricanes offered prior to it becoming clear there wasn’t a deal to be had before July 1, but presumably the Hurricanes followed a similar tact to the one used in negotiations with Dougie Hamilton and Vincent Trocheck.

They probably had a number, maybe they even went over it a bit, but it wasn’t enough to stop Guentzel and his representation from wanting to test the market.

There’s still time for things to change, but there’s limited reason to believe the Hurricanes would go high enough to make it happen, as there’s nothing happening that would change their objective valuation process.

The thing that should change that is a dose of reality about this team’s long-term window, which is a word that’s been ignored in favor of the notion of constantly competing with a hope of eventual

The front office broke their trend by paying the assets to acquire Guentzel in the first place, and they should do the same to keep him in Raleigh.

Barring another stroke of lottery luck after a random missed playoffs, the Canes won’t acquire another franchise talent unless they strike late in the draft.

That’s happened, at most, twice in team history, as Sebastian Aho (26) and Jaccob Slavin (30) represent the team’s current core, and frankly, their primes represent their championship window.

Seth Jarvis is a fantastic player, but the odds of a winger developing to the level where he can carry the franchise to a Cup as its best player are fairly low.

The window is Aho’s prime and what’s left of Slavin’s, saying it’s anything else is wishful thinking built upon the assumption of a wildly unlikely event happening again.

So if Aho and Slavin represent the franchise cornerstones, and they’re surrounded by a supporting cast of Jarvis, Svechnikov, and hopefully a developing Alexander Nikishin soon, we’re looking at four or five more years of realistic contention before the next cycle of building back toward this level begins.

Adding a Guentzel to that supporting cast is something you really can’t put a price tag on. If Guentzel was, say, 33 and likely to drop off in the next few years, this risk would certainly be worth avoiding, but you can pretty confidently project three or four more years of top-end play from the Nebraska native.

There’s no argument that an eight-year Guentzel contract would look fairly ugly for its last three years, but the cap will be up quite a bit by then, and the increase in chance at a ring in the near future is worth making what would likely be a tough run for the franchise a bit worse, in my estimation.

The elite winger that everyone has been waiting for Aho to have is finally here, and it would be a shame to go right back on the hunt for one after seeing just how well it worked in this brief window.