Again, you misremember. Rutherford was out of the hockey operations seat for an entire 39 days between when he stepped aside on 4/28/14 and got hired by the Pens on 6/6/14. The huge question was put on his hire not because he was out of the game for some length of time but for how he had run the Hurricanes into the ground with disastrous moves like the Semin contract extension, signing Tomas Kaberle to a 3-year contract, his inability to sign a backup goalie of even fair-to-middling talent, his declarations of "We like our group" when clearly there were moves to be made to improve the team, his idiotic attempt to replace Erik Cole with a power forward by committee of Anthony Stewart and Alexei Ponikarovsky, his stubborn insistence that a guy like Chad LaRose could be a first-liner, his notable trade acquisitions like Anson Carter, Alexandre Picard, Derek Joslin, and Marc-Andre Bergeron, blockbuster free agent signings like Ian White, Stefan Yelle, Patrick O'Sullivan and Tim Brent, and amazing draft talents like Philippe Paradis, Jamie McBain, Zac Dalpe, and Zach Boychuk.