Tweetmail No. 192: Draft Picks, Trades & Centers

Hello and welcome back to Tweetmail, presented by our friends at
Tijuana Flats
!
Tweetmail is a weekly feature on CarolinaHurricanes.com in which I take your Twitter questions about the Carolina Hurricanes or other assorted topics and answer them in mailbag form. Hopefully the final product is insightful to some degree, and maybe we have some fun along the way.
Let's get to it.

1. None of the Hurricanes' five picks from the second day of the 2018 NHL Draft are expected to turn pro this year. Jack Drury is committed to Harvard, Luke Henman will head back to the Quebec Major-Junior Hockey League, Lenni Killinen will remain in Finland, Jesper Sellgren will remain in Sweden and Jake Kucharski, who is currently in the USHL, is committed to Providence.
   Outside of the top five picks in the draft (and even then there might be one or two who opt for another season in junior or at college), it's rare to see a kid ready to take the step to the pros at just 18 years of age.
   2. Yes, I think it's reasonable to expect that the Hurricanes still have tweaks to make to their roster via trades and/or free agency. The draft-day transaction with Calgary was a major roster shake-up, and there could be one or two more on the way, especially with the frequency Jeff Skinner's name is floated in conversations. As far as free agency is concerned, I'm not sure the Hurricanes will make a splashy signing - that's not been the team's modus operandi - but depth pieces could certainly be options.
   
   Martin Necas made the Hurricanes' roster out of training camp last season and made his NHL debut in Edmonton before being returned to the Czech Republic before the end of October. More than anything, his time with the Canes allowed him to get a taste of life in the NHL - he got to know his teammates, he got to practice with an NHL club, he got to experience a road trip.
   Those moments should benefit him this year. I believe he again makes the team out of camp, and this year he'll likely stick around.
   Where he fits in on the roster is something we'll be watching closely in training camp because it's somewhat difficult to project at this point. He's a natural center, but would playing on the wing help him ease into the league? Or, if he plays center, is he in the top nine? The exhibition season should help work through these questions.
   Tweet from @everytimeidavid: Who plays center for us next year?
   In no particular order, I think Sebastian Aho, Jordan Staal, Victor Rask and Martin Necas are all candidates to play down the middle. If Necas would be better suited on the wing, especially early on, someone like Lucas Wallmark or Patrick Brown could easily fill a depth center position.

It's apparently 42.
Neither TV's Mike Maniscalco nor I caught on when this question came up on the latest edition of CanesCast. If you haven't listened already,
do so here
! And consider subscribing if you like what you hear so you never miss an episode.
Speaking of CanesCast - the first live recording of the podcast will happen on Saturday after the Canes Prospect Game at the
Summerfest Celebration
. Stick around in section 119 to hear it. It should be fun!

I saw pictures of said bacon flight on Twitter, but I didn't get a chance to try it or even make it to BrainDead Brewing while in Dallas. Thanks to some travel mishaps (detailed on episode 48 of CanesCast) and quite the busy weekend, time away from American Airlines Center and our hotel was severely limited. But I did get to check out two really dope spots in Deep Ellum: Dots Hop House and Cocktail Courtyard and Adair's Saloon. I'll for sure be returning to both (and hopefully checking out BrainDead at some point, as well).
Who's making the trip to Vancouver for the 2019 NHL Draft? Never too early to start planning.

In the
last edition of Tweetmail
, I was asked to give a hint about the Canes' new third jerseys, something "something to speculate wildly about for the next couple weeks." I played along and offered up this hint: fish biscuit.
By now you've probably seen the
new third jerseys
(which are all the fire emojis) and might be wondering what that hint meant.
(Spoiler alert for the season three premiere, which aired 12 years ago so c'mon.)
In the
season three premiere of LOST
, Sawyer successfully figures out the "complicated gizmo" that results in a fish biscuit reward. The sequence involves a button that, when pressed, responds with "warning." Hence, the two warning flags and #TakeWarning.
It was obscure, but it was indeed a hint. And speculation was wild. (But

pretty much nailed it.)
\\*
Join me next week for more questions and more answers!
If you have a question you'd like answered or you'd like to rehash LOST (just finished another rewatch, which is why that hint came to mind), you can find me on Twitter at
@MSmithCanes
or drop an email
here
.