Eric Tulsky didn’t set out to crack the hockey code or win a Stanley Cup. He was just trying to build a better electric-car battery. The hockey analysis and blogging? Just a hobby. An interest. An avocation.

Ten years ago, before he joined the Carolina Hurricanes and switched careers midstream, he never saw this coming: As soon as Wednesday, the Hurricanes will officially name Tulsky, their interim general manager since Don Waddell left last month, his permanent replacement.

Tulsky’s journey from scientist — he has a doctorate in chemistry from California and, at last count, 27 patents largely in nanotechnology — to hockey executive makes him utterly unlike any of his 31 new peers. And if they’re surprised, imagine what he would have thought a decade ago.

“It would have shocked me,” Tulsky said. “A month before I took a job with the Canes I did not even think it was possible I could work in hockey. I was looking for one-off consulting gigs to do on the side because I thought it would be fun. It never really occurred to me that it could really be my job until it was.”

For 10 years the leader of the Hurricanes’ constantly expanding analysis group, first under Ron Francis and then under Waddell, Tulsky’s fingerprints are all over the team that, after three years and no conference-finals wins as a prime Stanley Cup contender, will undergo some salary-cap influenced retooling this summer — making this less of a change in direction and more of a reinforcement of one.

When Tom Dundon bought the Hurricanes in 2018, he expected to have to build a top-flight analytics department from scratch, based on the antiquated way the franchise was run otherwise. He found out the people he needed were already in place. And when Waddell, the ultimate hockey insider, departed to run the Columbus Blue Jackets, Dundon turned things over to the ultimate hockey outsider.

“When I started the process of talking to other people, it only reinforced what I already thought,” Dundon said. “He was going to be the best choice.”

Because of his background and rise to power, Tulsky’s tenure as general manager is unavoidably going to be seen as a referendum on analytics in hockey, especially to the traditionalist gate-keepers who hold so much sway in the sport.

Never mind that people without playing, scouting or agent backgrounds have had success in other sports — no one has ever been worried whether Theo Epstein could throw a slider — or that Tulsky interviewed for GM jobs with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks. He will nevertheless carry that burden, even if the Hurricanes’ process won’t demonstrably change from how things were run under Waddell.

Tulsky was an important voice in the way the Hurricanes were built under two different general managers, latterly in charge of both analytics and pro scouting for the past four years, and Rod Brind’Amour, Darren Yorke, Justin Williams and the scouting staff will continue to be important voices as they were under Waddell, and the overall direction of the operation will continue to be set by Dundon.

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