Panthers trade Vincent Trocheck to the Hurricanes for some reason

The Florida Panthers have surprisingly moved on from forward Vincent Trocheck in the middle of a playoff race.

In one of the big shockers of this NHL trade deadline, the Florida Panthers have decided to trade forward Vincent Trocheck to the Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina has reportedly given up Erik Haula, Lucas Wallmark, and prospects Chase Priskie and Eetu Luostarinen.

This fills a need for the Hurricanes as they were looking for forward depth, and he also has term left on his contract. Carolina is also reportedly looking to upgrade their defense as they will be without both Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce for the foreseeable future as both are injured. They have their first-round pick in play for that if they want to make a move there.

In regards to Trocheck though, the Hurricanes are getting a player who is a former 30-goal scorer and has two other 20-goal seasons under his belt. He hasn’t been the same player since 2017-2018 due to injuries — he played in just 55 games last season — but if he can get back to that level, Carolina will be that much more dangerous going down the stretch and into the playoffs. So far this season, Trocheck has 10 goals and 36 points in 55 games for Florida.

As for the Panthers, this is a trade that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense for them on the surface. The only way it can perhaps make a little bit of sense is if general manager Dale Tallon was told to cut some salary before the end of the season.

Even with that though, the Panthers are just two points out of a playoff spot and this doesn’t exactly send a good message to their fans about the Panthers’ chances to make some noise for the rest of the season. It’ll be interesting to see what else Tallon and the Panthers have in-store today for some of their other players.

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