In town for the annual team picture, Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos had plenty to smile about Tuesday. His team is 7-2-1 and in position to hold off the Washington Capitals in the Southeast Division after two extremely frustrating months.
A voracious consumer of anything written about the Hurricanes — including, he revealed, this blog — Karmanos has a long memory for slights against the team, whether it be the waiver claim of Sergei Samsonov or the Toronto media’s infatuation with general manager Jim Rutherford.
Still, his duties running Compuware, the Detroit software company he founded, have prevented him from taking a more active role in the franchise.
“I’m very involved (with Compuware),” Karmanos said. “I’ve been remiss because I have a full-time day job right now. … Hopefully we’ll get all of our other issues behind us and I’ll be able to spend a lot more time here and I want to do that.”
Those topics, and more, were covered when he sat down with the N&O after practice:
ON THE STILLMAN-COMMODORE TRADE: “You don’t like to get close to players and see them traded, but when things were going the way they were, we needed to shake it up. The really nice thing about that trade was for the future, because both players we traded away were going to be unrestricted free agents and we would have had a very difficult time, based on the performance of the team and some individual performances, to pay them what they were going to command in the market. We ended up with a defenseman who was really the kind of guy we needed. To make a long story short, from an on-the-ice point of view it was great but also from the business end of it, it really was a great trade.”
ON ADDING SAMSONOV AND TUOMO RUUTU: “I think the deal with Ruutu was far more significant than anyone is giving us credit for. I realize that he’s struggled but he could be a first-line players at some point in his career. He’s an outstanding guy and I think we made a great, great deal. The Samsonov one cracks me up, because I’ve been waiting for all the pundits to say something. They certainly had plenty to say when we first got Sergei. But they’ve been very, very quiet. Too quiet, as a matter of fact. Turns out his career wasn’t over. Turns out he’s a great person, a great team player. He understands how to play in his own end of the ice. When you can get a player like that for as little as we gave up, which was his salary, it was great.”
ON THE HURRICANES’ TURNAROUND: “It was frustrating, and I can tell you I’ve been very, very pleasantly surprised. I feel really good about the team. If we make the playoffs — if, and that’s true for a lot of teams — we will do very well.”
ON RUTHERFORD AS A POSSIBLE CANDIDATE FOR THE TORONTO VACANCY: “I find that whole thing amusing. I talked to Jimmy yesterday about the whole Leafs situtation. I don’t know what the (heck) they’re going to do. I wouldn’t stand in his way. I haven’t stood in his way before. Because of my friendship with Jim and the number of years we’ve been together, I would probably have some very serious conversations with the Toronto people before I would give them permission. They are as screwed up as you can get. This whole thing about all the names that are being mentioned, everyone they’ve talked to who has been there, it may be an indication of why they’ve been so poor for so many years now.”
ON RON FRANCIS AS ASSISTANT GM: “He brings another dimension, just like he did on the ice. He’s really a Hall of Famer, and a lot of that ability to become a Hall of Fame kind of player, a certain percentage of that was mental, and he brings that mental attitude to the entire organization.”
ON WHETHER THE HURRICANES CAN TURN A PROFIT WITHOUT MAKING THE PLAYOFFS: “Probably not. We need more corporate support here in Raleigh. It’s hard because there are so few headquarters. That’s our biggest area. We need to sell about a thousand more tickets a game. We do very well, but we need to fill the building more.
N&O
sports writer Luke DeCock tracks the Carolina Hurricanes.
