Hurricanes must turn focus to next season. Who will stay? Who could leave?
The nature of every team sport these days is that when one season ends, preparations for a new season begin quickly, intensely. There is no downtime. Harsh, perhaps, but necessary.
There’s the roster to analyze and contracts to sort out for the next year. In the NHL, if a team goes deep in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the NHL draft and free agency can be upon it rapidly.
That’s what the Carolina Hurricanes face now, after bowing out of the Eastern Conference Final. Their season ended Wednesday with a 5-3 loss to the Florida Panthers in Game 5 of their series at the Lenovo Center.
Canes center Sebastian Aho seemingly was near tears after the game in talking about this team, of how it would be the last time this group would be together. Changes, he knows, will be made and there will some goodbyes.
“That’s the bad part of this business,” Aho said. “You build friendships. It’s like a family, right? Everyone cares a ton about each other. You try to push all the chips to the middle and try to do something great together.
“I’m sure whenever we’re able to do that, we’ll share that bond. I’ll share the bond with these guys, but it’s different when you win. That (stinks) that we weren’t able to do it, but this group is special. It was a lot of fun to come into work every day.”
Aho paused for moment, saying again, “It’s part of the business.”
A year ago, there was a lot of change after the Canes lost out in the second round to the New York Rangers. Fixtures like defensemen Brett Pesce and Brady Skjei left in free agency, as did forwards Teuvo Teravainen and Stefan Noesen. Forward Jake Guentzel wound up with the Tampa Bay Lightning when the Canes could not sign him to an extension.
“With what we lost and with the pieces that were left with this organization, it was like, ‘I don’t think we’re making the playoffs,’” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Wednesday. “It was such a mass exodus of good players to free agency. Then you were able to find good players to fill in and then I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re that good.’
“But they hung in there. I’ve got nothing but pride with this group.”
What the Canes lacked in the conference final against the Panthers — called “the standard” by Brind’Amour — was precisely what they sought, had and then decided to let go: a consistent scorer in Mikko Rantanen.
A year ago, the Canes traded for Guentzel, a proven point producer and former Stanley Cup winner with Pittsburgh. This season it was Rantanen.
Canes general manager Eric Tulsky caused ripples throughout the NHL when he traded for Rantanen. The deal with the Colorado Avalanche for the Finnish superstar forward also included getting Taylor Hall from the Chicago Blackhawks as Tulsky looked ahead to the playoffs in adding both a proven scorer and former Stanley Cup winner and Hall, a former league MVP.
We all know how that ended. Rantanen was disgruntled from the start and Tulsky quickly elected to send him on his way to the Dallas Stars, who agreed to send forward Logan Stankoven to the Canes as part of that deal.
“Every time you make a change you’re taking some risk that it’s not going to go quite the way you’d hoped,” Tulsky said. “When you’re bringing in a player like Mikko, the upside of having that work out is worth the risk in my mind.”
It didn’t work out. But Tulsky said recently that though the Canes had to part with Rantanen, he still believed they had a competitive enough team to contend for the Cup this year.
“We want to compete for the Cup every year and we think we’ve built a team that’s capable of doing that,” he said in late April.
Compete, yes. But the Canes now have reached the playoffs for a seventh straight season under Brind’Amour but been unable to advance beyond the third round. There have been three trips to the conference final, where the road has ended.
Stankoven, 22, did his part in the playoffs and has earned the trust of his Brind’Amour. The Canes also made a very late addition when they brought in defenseman Alexander Nikishin from Russia, adding a player who had starred in the KHL and will be a big part of the Canes’ future.
The subtractions after this season?
Some believe defenseman Brent Burns will not return. His 21st NHL season, and his third as Jaccob Slavin’s defensive partner, might be his last with the Hurricanes.
Defenseman Dmitry Orlov, like Burns, is a veteran D-man who played the final year of his contract and is due to become an unrestricted free agent. He, too, could leave.
The Canes, because of injuries to defensemen Jalen Chatfield and then Sean Walker in the playoffs, used Nikishin and Scott Morrow in the Panthers series. It was trial by fire, especially for Nikishin, who jumped into the playoffs, trying to learn on the fly.
That was a lot to ask of Nikishin and Morrow, but the experience of being in the most pressure-packed games of the season should help their development.
The Canes also have decisions to make on Eric Robinson and Jack Roslovic. The two forwards, new to the team this season, will be UFAs, and Tulsky might decide to let them test free agency.
Tulsky already has signed Hall and goaltender Frederik Andersen to contract extensions, and might consider more.
With the NHL salary cap for the 2025-26 season projected at $95.5 million, a sizable increase from this year’s $88 million cap, the Hurricanes will have the cap space to make major moves. Tulsky, undaunted by what happened with Guentzel and Rantanen, would not surprise anyone by making another home run swing or two.
Should be an interesting offseason, and it’s fast approaching.
This story was originally published May 29, 2025 at 10:28 AM.
