NHL
RALEIGH, N.C. — As he gave his opening statement in his first news conference as the Carolina Hurricanes’ new general manager, Eric Tulsky glanced occasionally at his notes on Wednesday, probably making sure he didn’t forget to thank each of the people who helped him go from recreational hockey blogger to leading an NHL team in about half as much time as it has taken Brent Burns to put together a Hall of Fame-worthy career.
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He thanked mentors Ron Francis and Don Waddell, coach Rod Brind’Amour, assistant GM Darren Yorke and owner Tom Dundon, and acknowledged the uniquely difficult offseason ahead for the franchise.
Until Wednesday afternoon, Tulsky mostly was viewed as the wizard behind the curtain, a genius who has often been credited — along with Dundon’s wallet and Brind’Amour’s coaching — with helping to turn around a franchise that was not just mired in the mud but also stuck in neutral while out of gas. If you were in the press box each game, Tulsky was around and willing to talk about just nearly anything: the game at hand, the big news around the league, maybe even my tongue-in-cheek Storm Siren grades. Yet, for fans, he was a bit of a mystery.
Many observers who have bought into the analytics revolution that has happened in hockey since Tulsky and a few other trailblazers started noodling around with numbers viewed him as the puppet master pulling the strings as Waddell served as the face of the team’s actions.
Some of those who haven’t accepted the viability and influence of data science in the NHL perceive him as a man locked in a room with computers and spreadsheets, handing three-ringed binders full of numbers to the rest of the front office, coaches and players without so much as watching a hockey game.
The truth, naturally, is somewhere in the middle.
Yes, Tulsky’s input has been valued — Dundon wouldn’t have promoted him had he felt otherwise — but the Hurricanes’ collaborative model will live on under its new GM.
“I don’t think a single decision gets made without at least three people having input, and sometimes 10,” Tulsky said during the news conference. “And as a management staff, our job is to understand what Rod wants to see his team have, how he wants to see it constructed, what he thinks it needs.
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“And it’s our job to go look for those pieces and bring him options and talk to him about which ones we think fit best and find out what he thinks fits best. And every person on the staff has a role to play in making those decisions.”
But make no mistake: Tulsky’s promotion means new duties, more responsibility and more of a final say in what decisions are made and the processes used to get to those solutions.
“There’ll be some small tweaks to some internal processes, some things where I think we can be a little bit crisper about how we execute on some of the things we want to do,” Tulsky said of how he expects to change things in his elevated role. “But our big-picture organizational strategy isn’t changing.
“There may be elements of the way we execute that strategy that change a little bit. But as a whole, as an organization, it’s really important to us that we have the coaching staff’s involvement in all of our decisions. It’s really important that everyone in our management team and all of our scouts feel like they have a voice and contribute to the conversation.
“And, ultimately, the job of the leader is to bring all those voices together and integrate the information that they provide and help the organization make a decision. And that’s how we’ve always operated, and that’s not going to change.”
With that answer, Tulsky — seemingly 10 times more confident than he was just five minutes earlier while peeking at his notes — grabbed the wheel of the Hurricanes’ vessel and set course for the future.
It’s one fraught with icebergs.
Waddell’s departure came as a surprise to the organization, but the timing of his decision made sense. Carolina entered the offseason with four of its seven regular defensemen needing new contracts. Three of the team’s top-four scorers are also due new deals. There are questions about Carolina’s goaltending, and the team must fill out its AHL roster now that it has rekindled its affiliation with the Chicago Wolves.
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Tulsky has already gotten to work. He re-signed one of those defensemen, Jalen Chatfield, to a three-year, $9 million extension, while still under the interim GM label, and the team announced on Thursday that longtime Swedish Hockey League coach Cam Abbott will be returning to North America to coach the Wolves.
Those two boxes are now checked, but they almost look like a rounding error given the work ahead — ongoing player negotiations, the draft and the opening of free agency will all happen within Tulsky’s first two weeks officially on the job.
“This is a complicated offseason, I think we all know that,” Tulsky conceded. “There’s a lot of free agents and we’re gonna have to work to be creative on solutions to keep the team moving forward. It does open up opportunity for some of the players we have to step into bigger roles on the ice and in the locker room.”
And it’s an opportunity as well for Tulsky to show that someone who embarked on perhaps the most unconventional path ever taken to the top of an NHL organization is up to the task.
It’s something he couldn’t have conceived just over a decade ago.
“I didn’t get into this thinking it was going to be a job,” Tulsky said of going from an in-his-spare-time SBNation blogger to working in an NHL front office. “A month or two before it became my job, it hadn’t even really occurred to me that it could be a job. So just getting into the NHL by that route was way off the radar, something I was not even thinking about. And then even from there, going from an entry-level position to a general manager position was not a normal path, not something I expected to have happen.”
Tulsky said all the right things on Wednesday, giving off an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” vibe while also admitting there was plenty of work left to be done to “keep getting better.”
He’s out from behind the curtain and keyboard for all to see, looking to add another chapter to an already improbable journey. There might be some double-checking of notes early on, but it’s probably unwise to bet against Tulsky.
(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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Cory Lavalette is a freelance writer covering the Carolina Hurricanes. He is senior editor for North State Journal, a statewide newspaper based in Raleigh covering North Carolina, and has written about the Hurricanes for several outlets since 2008. He is a graduate of Utica College (now Utica University) and has lived in the Triangle since 2000.
