The 2026 NHL off-season has been a wild one thus far, and after many trades, an exciting draft and an offer sheet that shocked the entire hockey world, things are seemingly far from over.
Two teams that have been active in speculation and rumors over the past month have been the reigning Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes and their Metropolitan Division rival New York Rangers, and recently, it was believed they would make a trade happen with each other.
Unfortunately for another potential surprise deal, things to this point haven’t progressed much, and now, a top NHL insider has outlined what happened to shut down one of the biggest rumors in the NHL over the past week.
Hurricanes Turn Down Massive Offer for Alexander Nikishin
GettyAlexander Nikishin of the Carolina Hurricanes.
For weeks, it’s been expected that the Hurricanes would deal young defenseman Alexander Nikishin, who was seemingly not happy with his role down the stretch despite the fact that they went on to win the Stanley Cup. There have been many teams that showed interest, with one of them being the New York Rangers, with the team likely hoping he could fill a role in their top-four, especially with the potential departure of Braden Schneider after he filed for arbitration over the weekend.
Right now, it doesn’t look like a deal is getting done, and on the latest 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman revealed the deal that the Hurricanes turned down, with the biggest offer including a first-round pick.
“I don’t know how close it came but there was some traction between them and the Rangers,” Friedman said. “Initially I think the Rangers offered a couple of draft picks including a 1st rounder, I kind of wonder if it’s that 1st they traded to Vancouver for (Marcus) Pettersson.”
Rangers Miss out on Exciting Young Defenseman
Friedman would then go on to say that the Hurricanes wanted a player in return, and while the Rangers have some intriguing pieces that could have helped them land Nikishin, they clearly wanted this to be a futures based deal, something that ended up killing the deal.
In Nikishin, the Rangers would get a two-way blue liner that already has Stanley Cup winning experience at just 24-years-old, but now that their right side features Adam Fox, the recently acquired Sean Durzi and Schneider, it doesn’t appear as though anything could happen on this front anymore. Thus far in the summer of 2026, the ‘Canes have been involved in plenty of speculation, with the team reportedly interested in Connor Hellebuyck among others, but up until this point, GM Eric Tulsky has not pulled the trigger on a deal.
Time will tell if the team make a blockbuster move as they attempt to go back-to-back in 2026/27, but if they still wanted to move Nikishin in a deal with the Rangers, one of the GM’s will need to budge on their negotiations, and it doesn’t appear as though that will happen anytime soon.
Carolina Hurricanes Turn Down Massive Offer From Rangers on Rising Star