2026-27 NHL team preview: Carolina Hurricanes
LAST SEASON
After years of knocking on the door, the Carolina Hurricanes finally broke through and won the Stanley Cup, erasing all narratives about their 1-16 record in their previous four appearances in the Eastern Conference Final on a dominant run through the postseason that saw them drop just three games along the way.
They did it by sticking to their guns, relying on a deep attack of quality forwards without a 100-point star, quality defensive acumen throughout the lineup and a next-man-up approach between the pipes.
The Hurricanes steamrolled their way into the postseason despite a rash of injuries to the blueline thanks to the most dynamic offensive attack the team flashed in the Rod Brind’Amour era. Carolina had seven different forwards reach the 20-goal mark in Seth Jarvis, Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho, Nikolaj Ehlers, Logan Stankoven, Jackson Blake and Jordan Staal, a huge boost for a team that consistently saw its scoring dry up in the postseason.
That depth was on display all throughout their run to the Cup, as the second line of Stankoven, Blake and veteran Taylor Hall tore their opponents apart through all four rounds while the top line of Aho, Svechnikov and Jarvis largely struggled.
On the back end, newcomer K’Andre Miller added an element of all-around play to the second pairing that the Canes had been sorely lacking since Brady Skjei departed in free agency two years ago. As Jaccob Slavin missed most of the regular season with lower-body injuries, Miller carried the unit with help from underrated contributors in Sean Walker, Jalen Chatfield and Shayne Gostisbehere.
Now, thanks to responsible management from GM Eric Tulsky that has seen low-risk, high-reward bets on long-term contract extensions to young players like Jarvis, Stankoven and Blake pay immediate dividends, Carolina is set up to contend for the Cup well into the future with minimal roster tweaks.
In fact, this summer has been so uneventful in Raleigh that, as of the time of this writing, the Hurricanes have not brought in a player from outside the organization that has a meaningful chance of playing considerable minutes on the NHL team next season.
Goalie Frederik Andersen departed in unrestricted free agency to try to help the Edmonton Oilers get over their own hump in the postseason, and restricted free agent defenseman Alexander Nikishin remains unsigned (he’s ineligible for an offer sheet) as the team looks to find a solution for him that would either involve a trade to a new club or an agreeable contract after an impressive 11-goal, 33-point rookie campaign.
Carolina enters the 2026-27 season in an interesting spot. They’re now fully unburdened by the weight of all of their previous playoff failures and will be playing with less pressure than ever. On the other hand, they utilize a physically demanding style and got minimal rest after wrapping up the Stanley Cup Final on June 14 before the newly moved-up regular season schedule sees their puck drop on the new season on Sept. 29.
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
None
Departures
Frederik Anderson, G (EDM)
Mike Reilly, D (UFA)
OFFENSE
The team that finished second in the NHL in scoring behind only the Colorado Avalanche in the regular season is well-positioned to put up big numbers once again.
The entire core returns on offense, but Jarvis will miss some considerable time at the front end of the season as he recovers from surgery to address a shoulder injury that had hampered him for parts of the last few seasons. That will open the door for Carolina’s top offensive prospect in Bradly Nadeau, the No. 30 overall pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, to earn an opportunity to start the year in the top six in training camp. Nadeau went from a dominant collegiate scorer at the University of Maine to one of the most prolific young forwards in the AHL, as he notched 32 goals in 64 games as a rookie in 2024-25 before posting 56 points in 52 contests this past season. Nadeau has likely been ready for the NHL (three goals in 12 games in Raleigh last season), but he’s been blocked by the team’s overwhelming depth on the wing.
It would be a stunner to not see Carolina run back the second line of Hall, Stankoven and Blake after their chemistry was so apparent in the postseason, and the fourth line of Eric Robinson, Mark Jankowski and William Carrier looks like a solid bet to reunite to begin the year as well.
That leaves the first and third lines as the question marks. Brind’Amour found success with a third line of Ehlers, Staal and Jordan Martinook, but Svechnikov is a stylistic fit with the latter duo as well. Whether or not Nadeau pops in camp could play a role in whether Ehlers, Svechnikov, or perhaps even both, join Aho on the first line.
It’s all a good problem to have for Brind’Amour, whose forwards will also get some help in terms of production from their defensemen. When healthy last year, Gostisbehere was having the best offensive regular season of his career, and if Nikishin returns, he has potential to push closer to 15 goals.
As far as depth outside the expected lineup, center Jesperi Kotkaniemi and bruising winger Nicolas Deslauriers return in their reserve roles, with talented distributor Felix Unger Sorum as likely the next prospect up behind Nadeau.
DEFENSE
There’s some irony to the fact that the Hurricanes, one of the best defensive teams in the NHL since Brind’Amour assumed the head coaching role, won the Stanley Cup in one of their worst defensive seasons under his tenure. Carolina finished eighth in the NHL with 2.49 expected goals against at 5-on-5. They were similarly sub-elite a year before as they rebuilt the blueline without Skjei and Pesce, but they were first in the league in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.
A full season of Slavin in the lineup should help them fare better against opposing first lines, and the overall team infrastructure remains in place to be the best in the league at suppressing shots, chances and goals against. The Staal, Aho and Jankowski lines are all excellent up front, and the Stankoven line tends to have the puck so much that little goes against them while on the ice.
Slavin will likely work with Chatfield on the top pairing once again, while Miller and Walker are set to reunite as a formidable second pairing on both ends of the rink. Last season, the duo of Miller and Walker maintained a 57.41% expected goals share at 5-on-5, but was done in by a brutal .876 on-ice save percentage. If that ticks up, the top four’s results should be in a great place.
The only pairing on the team that had a better expected goals share than Miller and Walker was that of Gostisbehere and Nikishin, which feasted in sheltered minutes against lesser competition to the tune of a 58.61%, the fourth best in the NHL among all pairings with at least 300 minutes together at 5-on-5.
If Nikishin ends up getting moved rather than signing an extension, the next man up will be Charles Alexis Legault or Joel Nystrom. Both impressed in fill-in roles a season ago, though Legault missed much of the season with his own injury. Nystrom was so impressive to the club that Tulsky had seen enough to lock him in to a four-year extension with a $1.225-million cap hit.
With Nystrom, Legault and Juuso Valimaki in the mix, there’s plenty of NHL experience waiting in the wings if the injury bug bites the blueline again.
GOALTENDING
Andersen’s departure means that Carolina will roll into the regular season with a tandem of Brandon Bussi and Pyotr Kochetkov. Bussi was one of the feel-good stories of the league in 2025-26, as he parlayed a waiver claim into a breakout role in the regular season. His hot start made him the fastest goalie in NHL history to 20 wins, and he was rewarded with a three-year extension with a $1.9-million cap hit during the Olympic break. His play fell off after the Olympics, resulting in Andersen going into the postseason as the starter, but when Andersen declined in the Cup Final after suffering a lower-body injury, Bussi took over the net in the middle of Game 3 and never looked back. His .931 save percentage from Game 3 through Game 6, culminating with a shutout in the clincher, etched his debut (not rookie due to his age of 27 at the time) season into NHL lore forever.
Bussi’s regular season stat line wound up at a 31-6-2 record with a .895 SV% and 2.47 goals against average. He’ll team up with Kochetkov, an aggressive, talented goalie who has struggled mightily to stay on the ice. The Russian missed most of last season recovering from surgery to repair a hip injury. While he has not been the most consistent option by any means, there is reason to believe in Kochetkov’s upside as a starter. In 2023-24, he posted a .911 SV% and 2.33 GAA across 42 appearances and 40 starts. He took a step back in 2024-25, but was still solid with a .898 and 2.60. Over his nine appearances prior to surgery last season, he went 6-2-0 with a .899 SV% and 2.33 GAA with one shutout.
This duo may look shaky on the surface, but it’s classic Carolina roster construction. Shouldering the risk that Kochetkov could get injured and that Bussi could regress from his heights of last season could go wrong, but it could also yield two high-level goalies at a combined cap hit of just $3.9 million for the season. Earlier in the offseason, the Hurricanes signed Zachary Sawchenko as a depth option for the AHL with some NHL experience.
COACHING
With a Stanley Cup on his resume, Brind’Amour now unquestionably resides in the highest echelon of the modern era of NHL coaches. He took over a team that had missed the postseason for nine years running and has now taken that group to the postseason, winning at least one series each time, eight years in a row.
He’s joined behind the bench by a pair of players he shared the ice with during his playing days in Raleigh, as former defensive ace center Jeff Daniels runs the forwards and power play while Tim Gleason is in charge of the defense and penalty kill. Daniels’ power play had been the subject of scrutiny through years of postseason no-shows, but the group came through in a big way in the Cup Final against Vegas.
ROOKIES
Nadeau is the gem of Carolina’s pool of possible rookie contributors, as the gifted scorer has been waiting for the opportunity to add his offensive punch to Carolina’s lineup for more than a year at this point. The Hurricanes have other rookies who have proven ready to make the full-time leap in Nystrom and Legault, and Unger Sorum will not be far behind.
The big plus for the organization is that there is no huge reliance on any one of these players to jump into starring roles at any point this year. Nadeau could have a shot on the top line, but the offense will be far from reliant upon his ability to produce if he’s there. The roster continuity the team has means any rookie can be properly sheltered and brought along slowly at the NHL level without being put in a position where a lack of experience could hurt the team.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Will fatigue set in? There’s a lot of tread on the tires in Carolina. They’ve been on numerous deep playoff runs, and several of their key players played in the Olympics before going the distance in June. The league’s expanded 84-game schedule and desire to adjust the league calendar to avoid the postseason running deep into June sets up a late-September start to the season, which abbreviates an already short offseason of rest for the champs. A weak Metropolitan Division means the Canes won’t necessarily need to kick things into the highest gear in the regular season to secure home ice advantage through at least the first two rounds, but does this group know any other way?
2. Is the goaltending good enough? The quality of the forwards and defense are so high that there’s not much point in pretending something could go wrong there aside from a catastrophic run of injuries, but that’s not the case in goal, where it’s easy to see a world in which neither Bussi nor Kochetkov shines as a No. 1 or that an even split doesn’t work out ideally for one reason or another. Tulsky reportedly made an offer to land Connor Hellebuyck over the summer, showing his willingness to be aggressive for the right target if needed. Still, everything we know about his and the front office’s modus operandi suggests they will try to power through this season with Bussi, Kochetkov and low-cost help if needed.
3. Will Nikishin stay or go? It wasn’t long ago that Nikishin was seen as a foundational piece of Carolina’s future blueline, a possible successor to Slavin as the team’s No. 1. While his rookie season was a success as he adjusted to life in North America and the NHL, there were plenty of moments throughout the year where his subpar skating and some questionable decision making flashed some red flags as to his true long-term ceiling. Still, his underlying numbers were great in sheltered minutes and the production was there, so his camp is justified in asking for a big number on a long-term contract, especially as the rising-cap environment continues to yield expensive deals for his peers. The Hurricanes have been rumored to be weighing trade offers for the talented Russian all summer, and this will all come to a head at some point.
PREDICTION
The much-improved Washington Capitals and New Jersey Devils have given it their best shot this summer, but no team in the Metro has done enough to have more than a puncher’s chance at dethroning Carolina atop the division. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility that another club gets hot enough to win the division the way the Capitals did in 2024-25, but the Canes are clear favorites.
The postseason is where it gets interesting. The Hurricanes have absolutely owned their divisional foes in the postseason with the exception of the New York Rangers, who do not figure to be a factor come April. Under Brind’Amour, the Hurricanes are 8-0 in playoff series against the rest of the Metro.
Carolina is destined to return to the Eastern Conference Final, where they could be faced with what would be one of the most anticipated playoff series of the decade against the 2024 and 2025 Cup champion Florida Panthers — if the Cats can defy their roster-wide aging curve and survive what promises to be a bloodbath in the Atlantic Division. Florida ousted the Canes in Round 3 in both 2023 and 2025, and both teams would welcome the rematch with a newly crowned Carolina squad possibly no longer being overmatched in the series.
Repeat champions, which were considered to be uniformly unlikely in the NHL from 1992 to 2017, are back in style. The Pittsburgh Penguins, Tampa Bay Lightning and Panthers have all accomplished the feat within the last decade. With a relatively young core for a contender and nearly unprecedented continuity, there’s little reason to believe the Hurricanes can’t join those ranks.
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