The New GM Of The Carolina Hurricanes Has One Of The Wildest Résumés You’ll Ever See For Reasons That Have Nothing To Do With Hockey

Getty Image

The Carolina Hurricanes found themselves looking for a new General Manager after Don Waddell defected to the Blue Jackets in the wake of their elimination at the hands of the Rangers, and the man who was officially hired to replace him on Tuesday has one of the more mind-boggling résumés you’ll ever come across for reasons that have nothing to do with hockey.

In 2018, the Carolina Hurricanes decided something needed to change after missing the playoffs for the ninth consecutive season, and the franchise cleaned house before announcing they’d hired former player Rod Brind’Amour to take over as head coach on the same day Waddell replaced Ron Francis as their GM.

That marked the start of an impressive turnaround that’s seen the team punch its ticket to the playoffs six years in a row (their best result was a loss to the Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final last year). They may still be in search of their first Stanely Cup since 2006, but things are definitely trending in the right direction.

The Hurricanes did suffer a bit of a setback following the conclusion of the most recent campaign when Waddell resigned to take over for the Columbus Blue Jackets after six years at the helm in Carolina. The team quickly filled the void by promoting assistant GM Eric Tulsky to an interim role as the head honcho in the front office, and on Tuesday, it announced he’d secured the role on a permanent basis.

Tulsky has slowly but surely worked his way up the ladder with the Hurricanes since he was hired as a part-time analyst in 2014. However, you won’t find many people in the NHL who took a less conventional route to get to the position he now holds.

The Michigan native initially attracted the attention of the Hurricanes while working as a hockey blogger for SB Nation in the early 2010s.

However, that gig wasn’t the primary focus of a man who majored in physics and chemistry at Harvard before earning his PhD in the latter at Cal Berkeley, which preceded a stint at the Naval Research Laboratory that led to a career where he focused on nanotechnology while racking up more than two dozen patents.

Way to make the rest of us look bad, Eric.