Adam Fox is a top three defenseman in the National Hockey League and one of the New York Rangers' most important players. He's easily been the best defenseman the team has had play for them since Brian Leetch, and is off to a great start to his NHL career. He was originally drafted by the Calgary Flames, was later traded to the Carolina Hurricanes, and then ended up in New York.
Don Waddell is currently running the Columbus Blue Jackets, but was formerly the GM of the Hurricanes. He made an appearance on the Cam and Strick podcast recently, and talked about Fox and what transpired in Carolina even though it's something that happened six years ago.
Adam Fox should be playing for the Carolina Hurricanes….Story time with Don Waddell up on all platforms. #NYR @CamandStrick pic.twitter.com/MWDzc88Xaq
— Andy Strickland (@andystrickland) July 29, 2025
According to Waddell, he was under the impression that if Carolina traded for Fox that he would sign with the Hurricanes. The deal was done and it saw Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm head from Carolina to Calgary with Fox, Dougie Hamilton, and Micheal Ferland returning to the Hurricanes.
Waddell then alleges that two weeks later Fox's agent informed him that Fox wouldn't be signing and that he had eyes for the Rangers.
As we now know, Fox ultimately was dealt to the Rangers on April 30, 2019 for a 2019 2nd round pick and a 2020 conditional 3rd round pick, and the rest is history. Fox has gone on to appear in 431 games for the Blueshirts and he's scored 63 goals and added 306 assists for 369 points.
He joined NHL legend Bobby Orr by becoming just the second defender to win a Norris Trophy before completing their third season in the NHL. Since that point he's also finished fifth, second, and fourth in Norris voting, and you can make a case that the year he finished second to Erik Karlsson he was robbed of another award.
All of that aside, it is pretty strange for Waddell to still be sour about the situation in 2025. For starters, the original trade went down in 2018, and the Hurricanes landed a great defender in Dougie Hamilton in the original trade.
Fox was traded again, but that was in 2019 which is six years ago at this point. Waddell doesn't even work for the Hurricanes anymore, and is now running the show in Columbus overseeing a team with quite a bevy of young talent. The nature of the business of summer content creation, to get a little inside baseball here, is try and drive clicks which is what the podcast was trying to do by bringing up the subject with Waddell being a guest. But he's a veteran hockey executive who has been around the block, and it probably would have been better to just let sleeping dogs lie and not engage in the subject. Waddell is only offering one side of the story, and I doubt Fox or his agent will want to comment further.