32 in (roughly) 32 Season Preview: Carolina Hurricanes

Despite quiet off-season, Hurricanes hope their core remains solid enough to win the cup, and more importantly, beat the Flyers

Team: Carolina Hurricanes

GM: Mike Giletto

Power Ranking Placement: 15/32 in league, 3/8 in division, 5/16 in conference

Significant Additions:

Zach Parise, C/W - 83 OV

Warren Foegle, C/W - 79 OV

Significant Subtractions:

Mike Hoffman, C/W - 84 OV

Jordie Benn, D - 76 OV

Nate Thompson, C/W - 77 OV

Ryan Ellis, D - didn’t play enough games

Joakim Nordstrom, C/W - Left for KHL

Offseason grade: C

The Carolina Hurricanes have had very bad luck this off-season with Ryan Ellis not being able to compete and Joakim Nordstrom leaving the team to compete in Russia. Though, it is questionable if Nordstrom would have even made the roster to begin with. So that probably isn't really a big deal. Regardless, they also lost Mike Hoffman to free agency and the only guys they brought in were Warren Foegele and Zach Parise. Parise is solid, though still a downgrade from Hoffman, and Foegele fills the void left by Nordstrom. The Hurricanes also chose not to re-sign Jordie Benn and Nate Thompson, who are still free agents as of this writing. The bad luck could continue next off-season with Lehner suffering an injury and likely being out for the entire season, so this season will be a very important one for Carolina seeing as their lineup could go through some drastic changes with Lehner’s absence being likely. Anyways, we’ll save that whole thing for next year’s off-season discussion. In terms of this off-season, the Hurricanes lost one of their top defensemen in Ryan Ellis, and weren’t able to address it. I also don’t believe they did enough to address the rest of the losses. On a surface level, it’s easy to say that they should have done more, but the Hurricanes were in a tough situation in that they have roughly 3M in cap space and have 2 important RFAs to sign who will be receiving a pay increase: Matthew Barzal and Sam Girard. With that in mind, it makes sense that they didn’t make a splash in free agency. That being said, I still can’t really warrant giving a higher grade than a C.

Projected Lineup: 

Point - Stephenson - Barzal

Toffoli - Trochek - Neiderreiter

Coyle - Nelson - Parise

Lindblom - Drury - Foegele

-

Slavin - Girard

Montour - Liljegren

Greene - Merrill

-

Lehner

Nedeljkovic

Quote from the GM:

“We feel like we have unfinished business. Losing to Pittsburgh last year left a bad taste in our mouths. We’re coming into this season with essentially the same team so I expect nothing less than a competitive hockey team. Ryan Ellis is out for the year with god knows what, so guys like Slavin and Girard are going to have to step up, along with younger players like Liljegren. There were a lot of rumors involving Mat Barzal this off-season and all I can say is nothing ultimately happened and we’re excited to have Barzal back. We expect big things from him this year.  At the end of the day, even if things don’t go our way, our number one goal is the same it always is: beat the Flyers.”

Season Expectations: Competitive

I’ve talked in the previous entries about the competitiveness of the west, but the closest competition will likely be for 3rd place in the Metro and the wild card spots in the East. The top 2 is pretty clearly Philadelphia and New Jersey, but it will be an extremely close battle between Carolina, Washington, and the Islanders for 3rd in the Metro, and you can add Ottawa into that battle for the two wildcard spots. I do have Carolina as the 3rd place team but the gap between those 4 teams is microscopic and any of the 4 could realistically make the playoffs. So, Carolina will really have to battle for that spot, but they have the tools to make the playoffs. They’ve got a very good forward group with an especially solid top 9, they’ve got okay defense though that is definitely their weakest area with Ellis being out for the year, and a great 1-2 punch in nets with Lehner and Ned. It should be a very close fight for these playoff spots and that will make the games against Washington, New York, Ottawa, and any other teams in the East looking to compete essential matches for them to win

Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at the Chicago Blackhawks. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful evening!

Previous entries:

Anaheim Ducks: https://dchl.ca/articles/senators/32-in-roughly-32-season-preview-anaheim-ducks

Arizona Coyotes: https://dchl.ca/articles/senators/32-in-roughly-32-sesaon-preview-arizona-coyotes

Boston Bruins: https://dchl.ca/articles/senators/32-in-roughly-32-season-preview-boston-bruins

Buffalo Sabres: https://dchl.ca/articles/senators/32-in-roughly-32-season-preview-buffalo-sabres

Calgary Flames: https://dchl.ca/articles/senators/32-in-roughly-32-season-preview-calgary-flames