“Analytics has never made a single choice for us, even though that’s the perception,” Dundon said. “It’s just one input into a much larger conversation around fit and character and work ethic.”

One thing that will change: Unlike Waddell, Tulsky won’t have to manage the business side of the franchise. The Hurricanes will be hiring for that. His focus will solely be on hockey. But he will not be alone.

“We talk about this being a group-dynamic decision-making process, and it’s important to convey how important Rod’s voice is in that, how important Darren’s voice is in that,” Tulsky said. “We are probably going to have to add some additional bandwidth to our management team and those people will be important voices, too. This is not a one-man show. I couldn’t do it on my own. Rod has a huge piece in everything we do, and Darren is essential to making this work.”

That said, the timing is awkward from a judge-the-new-guy perspective, at least right off the hop. Waddell’s departure coincided with a major inflection point in the Hurricanes’ future, with so many impending and inevitable departures coming in two weeks as contracts expire. The integral core won’t change, but so many of the pieces orbiting around it will, even if just how many remains uncertain at this point.

“I don’t think anything is off the table yet,” Tulsky said with regard to the possibility of re-signing Brady Skjei and Brett Pesce and the other unrestricted free agents, but the realities of the salary cap and the free-agent market mean there will be players leaving, and there will almost certainly be a short-term competitive impact as the Hurricanes retool.

But Tulsky is no stranger to playing the long game. Before working for the battery company, he worked in biotech and for a solar company, working diligently on technologies that might not see the light of day for years, managing research teams, justifying expenditures and the pace of progress to impatient CEOs and boards of directors.

“I come from a nontraditional background,” Tulsky said. “I think a lot of people wonder how that might be a negative and wonder if the things I haven’t done that some people have done will limit me or hold me back. People who have worked closely with me have come to understand that it also has prepared me well in many ways.

“(This) is ultimately an organizational leadership position, and my background gave me a lot of training in organizational leadership, in management, in organizational dynamics, in mentoring and in organizational process. I think that this role puts me in position to take advantage of all those experience that I’ve had.”

His background in applied research and affinity for hockey — he grew up a Flyers fan in Philadelphia — led him to apply those skills to the game he loved. Soon, writing for various blogs and websites, he started seeing things he thought NHL teams were missing. But it was always a sideline to his real work. If an NHL team wanted to pay for his insight, he was willing to listen.

Francis did him one better, hiring him full-time with the Hurricanes in 2014. Tulsky’s life veered away from its expected path there, bringing his family along for the ride. Tulsky’s son, now in college, joined the Junior Hurricanes. Several of his wife’s oil landscapes hang on the walls of his office at PNC Arena.

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