Canes’ Tom Dundon admits it all started with Sebastian Aho’s offer sheet…

Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon refuses to use the word revenge, but the way he put it to Sportsnet on Tuesday sounds pretty synonymous. 

In the summer of 2019, Sebastian Aho was tendered a five-year, $42.27 million offer sheet by the Montreal Canadiens, with an average annual value of $8.454 million. The Canes therefore matched the offer sheet, re-signing the young forward to a five-year, $42.27 million contract. 

When the Canes tended a one-year, $6.1 million offer sheet to Canadiens’ Jesperi Kotkaniemi, it felt like revenge. The Habs opted not to match it and let the young center walk on Saturday and now Dundon can count on Kotkaniemi for the upcoming season. He still had some explaining to do and when it did, it felt like the whole saga was prompted by revenge after all, despite what he claims. 

I mean come on, his signing bonus was just $20, to match Aho’s jersey number. 

“If it hadn’t happened to us it probably wouldn’t have happened to them, but (revenge) isn’t the reason we did it.” Dundon explained on FAN590. 

Interesting. 

“The idea we would do it for revenge, or to get even, is silly,” Dundon added. “We just want to win and we would only do something we thought would help us win more games. And the conclusion of our scouts and internally was this was a player with a big future and maybe his brand was down a little bit because of the way the season ended, but our folks had a lot of conviction in his future.”

And so what about all of the taunting that was done on social media to get to the Habs, then? 

“We’re all in the entertainment business and we don’t have a league if people aren’t entertained by it, and so when it worked out the way it did our philosophy organizationally on the business side is have as much fun, get as much attention as you can.” Dundon said.

Right… 

You gotta love how entertaining the Canes’ Twitter account is indeed. Not sure the Canadiens had as much fun as we did during the offer sheet deadline, but don’t worry, they are smiling now that they acquired Christian Dvorak from the Arizona Coyotes right after they let Kotkaniemi walk to Raleigh…