Have the Hurricanes been battle tested enough in the playoffs?

The Eastern Conference Final is set to begin tonight, with the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers set to take on the Carolina Hurricanes.

Many are excited to see whether the Panthers can ride the high of beating the Toronto Maple Leafs in seven games to another appearance in the final. On the other hand, the Hurricanes are simply trying to make it to the championship series by getting revenge on the team that ousted them four straight in the East Final two years ago.

Carolina has undoubtedly had the easier path to this point. While they lost a couple of games in their first two series against the New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals, it looked a little easy. Even though they had to go through the Capitals, who finished the regular season with the best record in the conference, many wonder whether the Hurricanes have truly been tested in these playoffs.

That question arose on Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, as Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli discussed the legitimacy of Carolina’s postseason campaign.

Tyler Yaremchuk: The Canes have had two quick series, and that’s raised some eyebrows, raised some questions about [if] they’ve really been pushed at all in these playoffs. Have they played truly elite competition? … Do you make anything of the fact that the Canes have maybe just had an easy road to this point?

Frank Seravalli: I don’t, because there’s not really anything you can do to control that. You can only manage what’s in front of you and the Canes dispatched both of those teams in a combined 10 games. Doesn’t really get that much cleaner than that. I don’t think you can play a better, cleaner series against a one-seed like Washington than they did. So, I think they’ve played really well.

I think the funny part about Carolina’s season is that – think about what they had on their team last year. A bunch of guys that left in free agency that were significant impact players. I think Carolina, in general, was thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll take a bit of a step back this year, but we’ll have flexibility, we’ll have space, we’ll be 7 to 10 points worse than we were last season, and we’ll see what happens when we get to the playoffs. Just be a playoff team, get in and see what happens.’ Would you imagine if this is the year that they end up breaking through and getting to the Cup Final and a chance to play for Lord Stanley? They went and took a shot at Mikko Rantanen, and it didn’t work out. They’re a better team now with Logan Stankoven and Taylor Hall than they were with Marty Necas and Jack Drury.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…