Ray Whitney sees reasons why the Hurricanes made the Erik Cole trade

From Chip Alexander of the News & Observer:

Q: One offensive guy who won’t be back is Erik Cole. How much will he be missed?

A: “It depends. You’re always going to miss a player like that. But how much is Joni Pitkanen going to help us? I mean, that will determine how much we miss Erik Cole.

“I think defensemen, when you look at the free agency market now, are very hard to come by and they come at a very premium price. I think if we were going to get a quality defenseman, we had to give up a quality player and we gave up a quality player in Erik. Obviously we will miss him, but it gives guys like Patrick Eaves an opportunity. …

“We’ll certainly miss Erik and I’m sure he’ll have a great season (in Edmonton) but he’s also coming up to unrestricted free agency and who knows if we’d be able to keep him at the end of the year anyway.”

Read the entire entry from Lord Stanley’s Blog here.

Whitney demonstrates a solid understanding of what Jim Rutherford’s job entails and I’d say he is pretty accurate in his assessment of the after-effects of the Cole trade.