That brings us to Don Waddell. He was GM of the Carolina Hurricanes from May 2018 to May 2024 and with the team for 10 years overall, first joining as president on the business side. The Hurricanes are not here at the 2026 Stanley Cup Final without the work Waddell did in those years, both on the hockey side and on the business side.
“Don did amazing work here,” Canes GM Eric Tulsky told The Athletic over the weekend. “I think he was the only GM in the league who also ran the business side of the organization. During his tenure, obviously, we started to have more success on the ice, but not everyone realizes how much improvement there was in the fan experience and business performance.”
The Hurricanes missed the playoffs nine years in a row before Waddell was named GM. They’ve made it to the postseason every year since.
“He helped the winning, and winning is the business,” owner Tom Dundon told The Athletic over the weekend.
Two years after his exit from Carolina to become GM and president of hockey operations in Columbus, Waddell absolutely has a tinge of pride to see his old team get to the final.
“Yes, 100 percent,” Waddell told The Athletic over the weekend. “We got to the conference finals twice when I was there, and we just couldn’t get over the hump. For them to reach the final now, Roddy (Brind’Amour) and his coaching staff have done a great job, and they’re being rewarded for it. It’s great for the fans. Those fans have shown up every night for a lot of years. It took us a while to build it up, but once we got it going, the fans jumped on board and stuck with it. They deserve it.”
When Waddell was first hired as president on the business side in May of 2014, there was a lot of work to be done. And that work is an equally big part of his legacy.
“We went through some growing pains there,” Waddell said. “When I went there, they had about 5,000 season tickets. Before we started making the playoffs, we were close to 8,000 season tickets, and once you start playing in the playoffs, it jumps up.”
It’s been sold out for years now in these parts.
On the arena side, Waddell oversaw renovations that took two and a half years and also chased down arena naming rights. It was grueling work.
“We were working on Lenovo for five years to get them to come up for the naming rights,” Waddell said. “There’s a lot of stuff that happened there that I’m very proud of.”
In retrospect, his decision to leave when his contract was expiring two years ago was good timing for everyone involved. Waddell needed a new challenge after a decade in Carolina.
“It was a time in my life where I was thinking about slowing down a little bit maybe, but within days of leaving (Carolina), Columbus called and offered me the job,” Waddell said. “I told my wife at the trade deadline that year, ‘It’s probably time for me to resign here and see what else is out there.'”
He also knew Tulsky, then an AGM, was ready to be a GM, and other teams had started calling, wanting to interview him.
“Yes, he had already had a couple of interviews,” Waddell said. “Eric is the smartest guy I’ve ever worked with. I would always tell him with the analytics he did for us, to dumb it down for me (laughs). But Eric deserves it. It was good timing for him, too. I’m happy for him.”
