It had been speculated as a possibility in recent days and on Tuesday, it was made official that executive Rick Dudley is leaving the Habs to join the Hurricanes. His contract was set to expire at the end of June.
Dudley has been with Montreal throughout Marc Bergevin’s tenure as he was one of Bergevin’s initial hires. He started his time with the Canadiens as an Assistant GM but had his role changed to Senior VP of Hockey Operations back in 2014. That will be his title with Carolina as well.
Montreal had given Carolina a deadline of today to get a deal done as this is when they are beginning their amateur scouting meetings in advance of next month’s draft. Dudley has been very active in scouting during his time with the Habs so this deadline made sense in order to ensure that none of Montreal’s rankings list made its way over to the Hurricanes.
Interestingly, Dudley is now reunited with Don Waddell, who is currently serving as interim GM in Carolina after they removed Ron Francis from the role two months ago (and officially fired him on Tuesday). Dudley worked under Waddell previously with the Atlanta Thrashers.
In a statement about his departure, Bergevin confirmed that his role would not be filled externally so other members of Montreal’s front office (including Scott Mellanby, Larry Carriere, Trevor Timmins, and perhaps Martin Lapointe) will have to pick up the slack.