"We're short a couple defensemen right now with injuries," Waddell told NHL Network Radio. "If we were going to spend some money in any place at this point, I think it'd be at defense.
"Now, saying that, we've all said we're going to give this some time here. The deadline is March 21, a lot can happen; we have a lot of games (seven before then), as everyone does in the next few weeks. That could change if something else happens with our team. If today was the deadline, I'd say we'd be looking at defense."
The Hurricanes are without defensemen Tony DeAngelo and Brendan Smith, each has an upper-body injury. DeAngelo has missed five games and Smith has missed six.
DeAngelo was expected to be out one month after he injured his midsection Feb 21 against the Philadelphia Flyers. He leads Carolina defensemen with 40 points (nine goals, 31 assists) in 43 games this season.
Smith was injured Feb. 20 against the Pittsburgh Penguins and there has been no update on when he could return. He scored five points (three goals, two assists) in 28 games.
The Hurricanes (38-12-5) are first in the Metropolitan Division. They were first in goals against per game (2.40) and eighth in goals per game (3.40) entering Saturday.
Waddell said Carolina is close to the NHL salary cap, so making a trade before the deadline won't be easy.
"We have about $1.8 million in cap space that we could go out and see how to improve our team," Waddell said. "We don't really want to lose anybody off our team to create cap space, so you've got to get pretty creative at that point."
