Morning Skate: Turnabout

Hey, it’s Thursday! That’s pretty cool.

I’m not sure how I missed discussing it earlier this week, but we got one of the all-time great petty moves from the Carolina Hurricanes this past weekend.

If you missed it, the Hurricanes got Montreal Canadiens RFA Jesperi Kotkaniemi to sign a one year, $6.1 million offer sheet.

Kotkaniemi was the third-overall pick in the draft a few years back, and has had some decent spells for the Canadiens.

Carolina, you may remember, was miffed when the Canadiens signed Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet a year or so ago.

The Canes quickly matched the offer sheet, and standard Twitter banter ensued.

Now, it’s hard to see the Kotkaniemi deal as anything but a bit of “take that” from Carolina.

As our friends at Canes Country note, Carolina doesn’t really need another center, and Kotkaniemi has been a center throughout his NHL career.

Sure, you could argue “hey, they just wanted to add a talented kid,” but...that’s probably a stretch.

My guess is that this was somewhere around a 60% troll move from Carolina with 40% “if we end up getting him, that’s OK too.”

In any case, anything that upsets Canadiens fans is hilarious, and the post on the offer sheet has more than a thousand comments on EOTP.

I didn’t sift through all of them, but I guarantee there’s plenty of use of the word “class” in there.

Good times.

Today’s discussion topic

What’s your take on offer sheets — should GMs use them more, or is it not worth the gamesmanship?