{"id":55,"date":"2010-07-01T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T23:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=55"},"modified":"2011-01-15T14:19:51","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T19:19:51","slug":"goodbye-whitney-hello-again-babchuk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Whitney; Hello, again, Babchuk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first day of the NHL&#8217;s free agency period saw more comings and goings as the Carolina Hurricanes continue to get younger.<\/p>\n<p>   The Hurricanes brought defenseman Anton Babchuk, an effective member of their 2008-09 squad, back to the team following a one-year absence. At the same time, veteran fan-favorite Ray Whitney signed a 2-year deal with the Phoenix Coyotes.<\/p>\n<p>   Whitney&#8217;s departure became more and more imminent during the run-up to Thursday&#8217;s opening of the free-agent market. With the Hurricanes determined to keep payroll on the lower end of the salary-cap spectrum for 2010-11, there wasn&#8217;t going to be a place for a 38-year-old left winger.<\/p>\n<p>   That&#8217;s not to say that Whitney doesn&#8217;t have value. His lockerroom presence is immense and he did contribute 21 goals and 37 assists last season. That makes four consecutive seasons he&#8217;s notched at least 20 goals.<\/p>\n<p>   But the <a href=\"http:\/\/tsn.ca\/nhl\/story\/?id=326270\">reported $6 million<\/a> Whitney will receive from Phoenix over the life of his new contract probably exceeds what he will produce in the waning years of his career.<\/p>\n<p>    Babcuck, 26, comes back to Carolina after playing in Russia last season. He&#8217;ll make $1.4 million for the Hurricanes in 2010-11. He played well during his last stint for the Canes, establishing career highs in goals (16) and assists (19) in the 2008-09 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first day of the NHL&#8217;s free agency period saw more comings and goings as the Carolina Hurricanes continue to get younger. The Hurricanes brought&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}