-Tara Hun-Dorris-

Hockey is not just an icy sport. It is also an ice-cold business. As a fan, sometimes I get caught up in the joy of the season and lose sight of that reality (although arguably I shouldn’t given the size of our monthly STM invoices).

The trade of Martin Necas on January 25 really brought that home.

Necas has been a favorite player. My son alternates wearing his jersey and Pyotr Kochetkov. What I loved about Necas prior to this spectacular 2024-25 season was his beauty on the ice. If he hadn’t been a hockey player, he could have had one Hell of a figure skating career. Multiple gold metals. Cereal boxes (or whatever they do for Olympic champions these days).

Necas skates beautifully. He weaves and twirls and moves with grace not expected from a 6’3″ 195 lb hockey player covered in heavy padding. When he and Sebastian Aho are on the ice together and have space, it’s routinely been the place where the Hurricanes magic happens (these two happen to be our leading all-time overtime point scorers with 24 for Aho and 20 for Necas).

And Necas is fast, fast enough to hold the maximum skating speed in the NHL (24.49 mph). He ranks third this season in 20 mph speed bursts. And now that he’s having a breakout season, he’s been a beautiful joy to watch who also can score outside of overtime (16 goals and 39 assists for 55 points). And he’s been – at least from the public vantage point – a great Cane. He has an impeccable sense of style and is polite and charming. At the STM family event last year, he was the most well mannered, personally engaged player we spoke with. At 26, he (hopefully) has a long NHL career still ahead.

But not as a Cane (insert tearful emoji here).

All around Raleigh we’ve been saying you can’t spell C-A-N-E-S without N-E-C-A-S, but actually you can.

And here’s where we come back to the business of hockey. Watching Necas have 2 assists against the Blue Jackets January 23, I had no idea I was watching his last game as a Cane. But GM Eric Tulsky was hard at work doing his job, which is to bring us a Stanley Cup. And sometimes to really win big you have to take a chance and break up or shake up the band and re-assemble with different pieces. And so we gave up Necas and Jack Drury in exchange for Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall and the chance to stack our offense high enough that Aho is no longer our best offensive player. Hopefully, this will allow our inconsistent team to make it more than a round or two into the playoffs and bring Stanley back to Raleigh, which, at the end of the day, is what this business is all about. Winning and the money that comes with it. And hopefully victory and glory. And hopefully Rantanen likes life as a Cane and signs long-term with us. Otherwise, the loss of Necas may really sting.

I will truly miss the beauty of Necas on ice in a Canes uniform. As a fan, it will take some time to adjust to his absence. However, there were rumors that he didn’t really want to be here, and regardless of the truth, I hope that he finds a happy home in Denver. I’ll be rooting for him on the Colorado Avalanche all but 2 games per season. I hope we see him back in Raleigh in the Stanley Cup finals this spring.