It was an action-packed day for the Carolina Hurricanes, who waived three players, set the wheels in motion on acquiring Pittsburgh Penguins winger — and noted playoff sniper — Jake Guentzel, and then notched a 4-1 win with starting goaltender Frederik Andersen back between their pipes for the first time since being diagnosed with a blood-clotting issue in November.

Their opponents, the Montreal Canadiens, had a quiet 24 hours, which could very well be a prelude to what we see from them between now and 3 p.m. on Friday, when the NHL’s trade deadline comes and goes.

It was on the ice at PNC Arena where the Canadiens did their best to at least make some noise, playing another hard game until an overturned Joshua Roy goal early in the third period knocked them off balance Thursday.

The Hurricanes then swept the Canadiens up in the second half of the frame, running them through their cyclone of a forecheck and pinning them for a marathon shift that killed close to three minutes of play — a sequence that ultimately led to Brady Skjei’s back-breaking goal at four-on-four to make it 3-1.

We weren’t in the building, but we could hear the decibel level rise significantly when Andrei Svechnikov iced this one into an empty net shortly after.

The television camera then panned to the Canadiens’ bench, which was understandably silent.

That all but mirrored what happened off the ice for the organization earlier in the day, with action heating up all over the league but cooling around the Canadiens, who only swung a minor-league deal that sent 21-year-old Jan Mysak to the Anaheim Ducks’ farm club for 21-year-old Jacob Perreault, who’s made his way straight to the Laval Rocket.

At the moment, it’s hard to get the sense the Canadiens are sitting on anything major, which, of course, could change at any second with one phone call.

But as the window for a call or two to come in gets closer and closer to slamming shut, the market Kent Hughes is playing in also appears to be narrowing.

Not that the Canadiens general manager intended to be stirring it up to begin with. As we wrote at the start of the week, he was under no imminent pressure to deal anyone off his roster ahead of the deadline, and that hasn’t changed.

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But we also noted that Hughes wouldn’t turn away from opportunities to recoup more premium assets for some of the pieces he’s willing to part with, and now it appears those opportunities might be somewhat limited after a flurry of transactions across the NHL changed the landscape significantly over the last 48 hours.

Think of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who may have had the most incentive of any team to meet Hughes’s price for right-handed defenceman David Savard. Their cost-effective move for former Canadiens defenceman Joel Edmundson earlier on Thursday signaled they couldn’t quite justify paying the Canadiens, and that they probably won’t be willing to do it before Friday’s deadline hits.

The Edmonton Oilers shored up their third pairing hours later, trading for Arizona’s Troy Stetcher and taking them out of the conversation for Savard, if they were ever even in it to begin with.

With barely any space left after also swinging a trade with the Anaheim Ducks Wednesday for Adam Henrique and Sam Carrick, the Oilers don’t appear in on Canadiens depth forward Tanner Pearson either.

Whether or not any team is interested, with Pearson making $3.25 million prorated through the end of the season, is still debatable. But if Savard remains with the Canadiens, they can retain half of Pearson’s salary to accommodate a team that might be.

Again, that might be as loud as it gets for this team on Friday.

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Perhaps a team offers up something of worth for Johnathan Kovacevic — a six-foot-five, right-handed defenceman making around the league minimum through the end of next season.

We felt the Calgary Flames might do that for him or Jordan Harris, but they claimed Joel Hanley from the Dallas Stars a week after trading Chris Tanev for a second-round pick, a conditional third-round pick and left-handed defence prospect Artem Grushnikov and a day after trading Noah Hanifin to the Vegas Golden Knights for a first-round pick, a conditional third-rounder and right-handed defence prospect Daniil Miromanov.

Perhaps a retooling Penguins squad jumps in on one of those two Canadiens defencemen. They’re sending out defenceman Ty Smith in the Guentzel deal and taking back Michael Bunting and three prospects all under 22 years old on top of the pick s they’re getting — signaling they aim to remain competitive while Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson remain in the fold — so that’s not out of the question.

But Pittsburgh is well behind most teams in its division, especially the Hurricanes, who are chasing a strong New York Rangers team for Metropolitan Division supremacy.

On Thursday, Carolina not only got closer with the win over Montreal — bridging the gap to four points in the standings — it did what it refused to do for years in selling a chunk of their future for a rental.

Guentzel, who has 34 goals and 58 points in 58 Stanley Cup Playoff games, is on his way.

And it might not be the only move that gives the Hurricanes a chance to knock the Rangers off their perch over the next 20 games and cement themselves as Stanley Cup contenders.

The Hurricanes already looked the part on Thursday night, with Skjei scoring twice, and with Andersen stopping 24 of 25 Canadiens shots to secure a win after missing 50 games with a medical condition that threatened his career, and they’re likely to only get stronger over the coming hours.

We’ll see if the Canadiens do anything, but Friday could look and sound similar to Thursday for them.

Canadiens cap quiet day with loss to a Carolina team making all kinds of noise

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