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Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon content with hands-on approach

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Tom Dundon was quite clear when he bought the Carolina Hurricanes.

“I’m not patient. It’s not going to work for me to be patient,” Dundon told reporters upon the announcement that he has acquired the team.

And while he also said he wasn’t just going to come in and expect to know more than then-general manager Ron Francis, his lack of patience got the better of him on Wednesday when he removed Francis from his post.

Dundon ‘promoted’ Francis to the president of hockey operations, while saying that whatever new GM was hired would report directly to Dundon himself, bypassing Francis in his new role.

Dundon has his hands in all of the cookie jars at the moment, something he seems to be quite happy with.

“I think it’s appropriate right now that I challenge and question everything we do, so we can get a process that everyone buys into and we’re comfortable with,” Dundon told NHL.com’s Tom Gulliti on Thursday. “Once we do, I would be less likely to be involved with things that I think are working properly.”

On Thursday, Dundon entertained several calls from the media, including Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Friedman said that during his conversation with Dundon, it became apparent that while Dundon and Francis both agreed the team needed to improve, the route in which that improvement was to go was a matter of differing opinions.

“I want to use Ron’s experience and knowledge with a different style and structure,” Dundon told Friedman on Thursday. “He is a valuable resource. But our styles couldn’t be any different. It is no more complicated than that.”

Despite his very hands-on approach thus far for the Hurricanes, Dundon told Friedman that he wants doesn’t want to make the decisions from a GM standpoint.

“I think what I’m looking for, is we have to be comfortable with each other,” Dundon said. “That’s the most important thing. I actually like to disagree and argue. I don’t want someone to come in and just do what I say, and I don’t want to make decisions. Someone to create a structure of how something is a good idea, and now we are going to get it done.”

Friedman had a thought on one line in particular in that quote:

One thing stands out from that answer: “I don’t want to make decisions.” In the aftermath of Francis’s redistribution, the sense was 100 percent opposite, that Dundon did want final say.

Who Carolina’s new GM will be is up in the air, but Dundon told Gulitti that it likely won’t be an analytics-first guy.

“Because I don’t think that works,” Dundon said. “I think you need a hockey guy that can work with the analytics people to challenge their thoughts. ‘Hey, I think this. Can you show me something that proves or disproves or makes me or less comfortable with what I’ve done?’”

And what of head coach Bill Peters?


Scott Billeck is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @scottbilleck