from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer,

It's fair to say the first few months of Tom Dundon's tenure as majority owner of the Carolina Hurricanes haven't gone swimmingly. The night of the press conference announcing his ownership, the team blew a one-goal lead with four minutes to play and lost in regulation, an unfortunate harbinger of the early days of the long-awaited change in owners.

Throw in the stuttering and abortive search for a new general manager after the firing of Ron Francis last month and the team's general slide into further irrelevance, and there's not a lot Dundon can hang his baseball hat on, so far

With the Hurricanes' elimination from the playoffs Saturday with three games to play, the offseason can begin in earnest, and with that Dundon's plans for overhauling the franchise. There's only so much any owner can do in midseason; the window for real change opens now

Start with the general manager search, which was folly to do during the season. Not only was it going to be difficult to convince anyone to leave their current team in the midst of a playoff run, the Hurricanes were offering half of the market rate, which runs about $1 million per season, in hopes that someone would be intrigued enough by the challenge. That didn't happen, nor did anyone blow Dundon's socks off to the point where he was willing to up his offer to seven figures.

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