It’s not the typical way to leak news, but Carolina GM Jim Rutherford took to Twitter to say there will be news on Jeff Skinner soon.
Rutherford tweeted out saying: “It looks like we are going to be able to get Jeff Skinner tied up for a number of years. Exciting news for our franchise.”
The Hurricanes have already made huge waves this offseason by trading for Jordan Staal and giving him a huge contract extension while signing Alexander Semin as a free agent.
Carolina has five players locked up through 2015-16 (Eric Staal, Tuomo Ruutu, Tim Gleason, Jay Harrison, and Cam Ward) with Jordan Staal signed through 2022-23. Adding Skinner to that list (assuming he gets a long-term deal) gives them a solid core of players to build around through the years with the Staal brothers and Skinner being premiere forwards.
Skinner isn’t set to become a restricted free agent until next summer and locking him up now is a good plan for him so he can get locked in under the current CBA.
UPDATE (11:05 p.m. ET): TSN’s Bob McKenzie tweets Skinner’s deal will be a six-year extension worth $5.725 million per year. That’s good for a total of $34.35 million. That’s a lot of scratch.