Jesperi Kotkaniemi explains how he thought he’d been traded and the panic that ensued

The trade shocked everyone last Friday night when star forward Mikko Rantanen was shipped by the Colorado Avalanche to the Carolina Hurricanes in a three-team deal that also saw the Canes getting Taylor Hall from the Chicago Blackhawks and Martin Necas and Jack Drury on their way to Denver. However, for several minutes, some insiders, including Frank Seravalli of Daily Face-Off, had posted on X that it “sounds like both Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Martin Necas are going” to the Avalanche. Less than 20 minutes later, it was confirmed by Emily Kaplan it would be Drury, not Kotkaniemi, as the second piece in the deal.

When the Canes’ players found out about the trade on social media, Kotkaniemi thought he was gone from Carolina.

“I thought I was gone for 13 minutes,” Kotkaniemi said, per NSJ online,“but I came back.”

“We were leaving dinner and things started to come up on social media, like, ‘Oh, what’s going on?’” Kotkaniemi added.

“There were a lot of names — my name and other guys’ names out there. So we were like, ‘What’s happening?’ No one really knew what’s going on.”

Kotkaniemi was not blindsided by the reports of a trade, after all his name has been mentioned more than once in latest rumours and so he simply thought his time had come. But he was trying to grasp the idea before the trade call was made and Drury was the player involved.

“Those are big things,” he said. “Everyone has families and houses, apartments wherever they play. So there’s a lot of things going through your mind when those things come up.”

When the trade was finalized, Hurricanes’ players got together and were able to say quick goodbyes to Necas and Drury.

“We all just got together,” Kotkaniemi said. “It was nice that everyone showed up, and it’s nice to say a couple last words to those guys for a while (because) we don’t play (Colorado) anymore this season. So it was a little hectic there.”

That must have been a very hectic evening for the Hurricanes, and especially Kotkaniemi, but he cannot relax yet. The trade deadline is on March 7 and general manager Eric Tulsky might have more moves coming…