Even if 2024-25 ends in disaster, Hurricanes’ future is exciting
I can’t imagine what it feels like to be a Carolina Hurricanes fan right now.
Forget the 0-15 losing streak in Conference Final games for a moment. Some of those defeats came as far back as 2008-09, when Paul Maurice, their current playoff opponent’s head coach, was behind the Carolina bench. The team has changed many times over since then. But even if we just look at the past two Eastern Conference Final appearances, in which Carolina trails seven games to none against the Florida Panthers between the 2022-23 matchup and this year’s, it’s flabbergasting.
Since the start of the 2022-23 season, only one team has a higher points percentage than Carolina’s .657 mark. At 5-on-5 over that span, the Canes lead the NHL in shot attempt share, expected goals and scoring chances while allowing the fewest chances and expected goals of any team. Under coach Rod Brind’Amour, they are the perfect play-driving beast, tilting the ice time and again against virtually all opponents.
And here they are, getting absolutely pancaked by the Panthers yet again, trailing 3-0 in the series, outscored 12-1 at 5-on-5, looking like a team that has already forfeit. Brind’Amour won’t be able to muster a “We didn’t get swept” narrative this time. It’s an utter humiliation, and reversing it to win four straight will require the Canes doing something only four teams in NHL history have. In all likelihood, against the defending Stanley Cup champs, it’s over.
The Canes haven’t shown the sufficient brawn to hang with the Panthers. More importantly, the Canes have lacked the finishing ability needed to keep up. Over that aforementioned two-year period of dominance, they ranked near the bottom of the NHL in shooting percentage, and the familiar problem has surfaced in Round 3. They’ve scored on just 5.33 percent of their shots in this series. It’s almost as if the team that hasn’t had a 40-goal scorer in 16 years hasn’t found a goal when it really needed one. These Canes are doing the ‘Corsi Merchants’ reputation no favors this spring.
Worse yet, Carolina did finally have that top-end scoring threat this season in Mikko Rantanen, but he didn’t jive with the system, couldn’t agree on a long-term extension and wound up jettisoned to the Dallas Stars six weeks after Carolina acquired him. The Canes finally got the player archetype they’d been missing, it blew up in their faces, and now he’s co-leading the Stanley Cup playoffs in goals while Carolina can’t buy one.
It will thus be difficult not to view the 2024-25 season as a disaster, one that should at least shorten Brind’Amour’s runway as head coach even if it doesn’t mean his time is up.
And yet, even though the Canes have been seemingly knocking on the door of elite Cup contender status for all seven seasons of the Brind’Amour era, this season, as ugly as it appears to be finishing, won’t go down as the end of something. The Canes’ window remains open, and it actually could stay open a long time given the way GM Eric Tulsky has things set up for the offseason.
First off, the Canes still have many good years left from their key contributors. Top scoring center Sebastian Aho is 27 and signed through 2031-32; Andrei Svechnikov, the team’s leading goal-scorer this postseason, is 25 and signed four more years; emerging star two-way forward Seth Jarvis is 23 and just commenced his eight-year extension; building block Logan Stankoven, 22, acquired in the Rantanen deal, hasn’t even completed his entry-level contract yet. Top shutdown blueliner Jaccob Slavin, 31, still looked elite for most of this season and at the 4 Nations Face-Off and his eight-year extension begins in 2025-26.
Secondly, Carolina’s prospect situation is low-key great. Jackson Blake impressed as a rookie goal-scoring threat, earning top power-play unit work by the spring; Bradly Nadeau was one of the AHL’s top offensive rookies in 2024-25 season, the fifth in league history to record a 30-goal season as a teenager; puck-moving blueliner Scott Morrow is likely to stick as a full-time NHL regular going forward; Alexander Nikishin, right up there with the best blueline prospects in the game, came over in time for the postseason and should earn far more playing time and responsibility next season. The Canes quietly landed 11th in DFO prospect analyst Steven Ellis’ prospect pool rankings a year ago, and that was before they acquired Stankoven and a second first-round pick for the loaded 2026 NHL Draft.
Thirdly: cap space. Lots of it. The Canes have more than $13 million coming off the books just from defensemen Brent Burns and Dmitry Orlov, both set to become UFAs, Burns a decent bet to retire at 40. They’re projected for more than $28 million in cap space, with no restricted free agents to worry about in terms of impacting their 2025-26 cap, with Stankoven, Blake, Nikishin and Morrow not up until summer 2026.
The Canes also boast a perfect storm to attract UFAs: (a) cold, hard cash available should they spend to the cap; (b) a contending team; (c) a market that offers relative obscurity for star players and (d) a coach that, by almost all accounts, everyone still loves to play for in Brind’Amour. Zoom out further, and Carolina looks like a team with plenty of attractive traits for an elite-tier UFA like, for instance, Mitch Marner. Yes, he nixed a trade to Carolina in March, but his wife was seven months pregnant at the time and he was in the middle of a playoff hunt with the Toronto Maple Leafs. A lot has changed since then.
With no major internal spending on the docket for GM Eric Tulsky, he’s equipped to pursue multiple top end UFAs in theory. If not Marner, Carolina could chase Florida’s Sam Bennett and Aaron Ekblad. For goal-scoring: Brock Boeser could be an option. For all-around offense: Nikolaj Ehlers would work. If the Canes need to replace Orlov, they could look at Vladislav Gavrikov. Further cementing a good situation: because the Canes have legit NHL-ready prospects and may not want to block them from roster spots, Tulsky can opt for top-heavy spending, bringing in a couple expensive, high-impact options rather than trying to fill every hole vacated by a UFA. The cap space and prospect crop also give Carolina a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option should Tulsky want to chase a star player via blockbuster trade, too.
Imagine the 2024-25 Canes, with all their top players still aboard, with their goalie duo of Frederik Andersen and Pyotr Kochetkov still intact, with youngsters Stankoven, Blake, Nadeau, Nikishin and Morrow playing significant full-time roles, with two of the top 10 UFAs on the market added to the roster. It’s not an unrealistic scenario at all. And it’s reason for Canes fans to look past the probable dark end to their 2024-25. Much better times await.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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