I was in the midst of putting together this piece when word came down Wednesday night that the Carolina Hurricanes had relieved Ron Francis of his GM duties.



He becomes president of hockey operations, but the next GM will report to the owner, not Francis. So his influence on the team has obviously been greatly diminished.



I was a fan of Francis the player, for obvious reasons, but I was also a fan of him as an executive. Since taking the top seat in Carolina in 2014, under challenging circumstances, he learned on the fly and made some savvy moves, like bringing in Eric Tulsky as his manager of analytics a few years back. He also methodically built up the franchise’s prospect pool when they had to operate under tight financial constraints.



I once asked Francis if he felt the GM role was going to go the direction it had in other sports, with more numbers-oriented types taking over. He didn’t give the answer you’d expect from a hockey...