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Hurricanes owner says former GM is leaving Penguins' cupboard bare

Peter Jones / Reuters

Peter Karmanos has already made recent news with his opinion of Alexander Semin, and now the Carolina Hurricanes owner is turning his attention to his former general manager, Jim Rutherford.

Karmanos offered his view of the way Rutherford and the Pittsburgh Penguins are doing business after Wednesday's free-agent frenzy, according to Dave Molinari of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

From Molinari:

On the Penguins’ win-now approach - "Pittsburgh has no first-round picks anymore. They traded their first-round pick from the year before. They traded their first-round pick for this year, and now they’ve traded their first-round pick for next year. But they have Kessel, who may score as many goals as, uh, Alex Semin did (six). And I don’t have to take credit for that."

The Penguins acquired forward Phil Kessel from the Toronto Maple Leafs in a blockbuster deal that will add his scoring prowess to a team that already includes Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

The trade, however, has left the Penguins without too many future assets, which Karmanos also touched on when speaking about the potential sale of the franchise.

"I think they’ll sell that team for between $700 and $800 million in Pittsburgh, and the cupboard will be pretty bare by that time."

Rutherford was replaced by Ron Francis as general manager of the Hurricanes in April of 2014.

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