Hurricanes place Dvorak and Skinner on IR, sign Malhotra

Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network
Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network

RALEIGH, N.C. – The Carolina Hurricanes made personnel moves on Thursday to deal with current injury and roster issues.

The team is currently in the midst of a three-game losing streak which it hopes to end as it begins a back-to-back home-and-away set of games against the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers beginning on Friday at PNC Arena.

President and general manager Jim Rutherford announced that the team had placed forwards Radek Dvorak and Jeff Skinner on injured reserve with Dvorak’s placement on injured reserve retroactive to Oct. 25, while Skinner’s was retroactive to Oct. 24.

Earlier in the day, Rutherford announced that the team had agreed to terms with center Manny Malhotra on a one-year, two-way contract.

The deal will pay Malhotra $600,000 at the NHL level, or $125,000 at the American Hockey League (AHL) level, with a guarantee of $250,000.

“Manny brings a level of veteran leadership to the Hurricanes organization and gives the team depth at the center position,” Rutherford said.

“He has demonstrated in his career that he can be an extremely good defensive player and faceoff man.”

Malhotra, 33, signed a professional tryout contract with Carolina’s American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, on Oct. 3 and has played in eight games with Charlotte this season.

He played in nine games with the Vancouver Canucks in 2012-13, sitting out most of the season with a recurring eye injury originally suffered back in March, 2011.

The former first-round (7th overall) draft pick made his NHL debut as an 18-year-old with the New York Rangers on Oct. 10, 1998 and has scored 108 goals, earned 170 assists (278 points) and totaled 421 penalty minutes in 864 regular-season games with the Rangers, Canucks, Dallas Stars, Columbus Blue Jackets, and San Jose Sharks.

He has led his teams in faceoff-win percentage in each of his last eight full seasons, and finished in the top six among NHL faceoff leaders five times since 2005-06, including ranking second in the league in 2007-08 and 2010-11.