Why the Carolina Hurricanes can’t avoid the pressure of a deep NHL playoff run
You’ll have to learn to pace yourself — Pressure You’re just like everybody else — Pressure
Billy Joel released an anthem to handling adversity three years after the Hartford Whalers joined the NHL, some 16 years before the Carolina Hurricanes existed.
Yet, the words are oddly prophetic as they relate to Tom Dundon’s ownership of the Canes, and Rod Brind’Amour’s tenure as the team’s head coach, which will wrap its eighth season sometime between now and the end of June.
The Hurricanes, of course, hope for the latest possible conclusion to the 2025-26 season, a mid-to-late-June season denouement that would mean a successful run to a second Stanley Cup championship in Raleigh.
That’s the first part of the pressure. Getting to that point is not a sprint, but a marathon during which a team has to simultaneously push hard and pace itself under intense pressure to succeed.
Adding to the squeeze the Canes are undoubtedly feeling in their eighth consecutive trip to the NHL postseason is … that they are entering their eighth consecutive trip to the NHL postseason, with a single win in three Eastern Conference Final trips to show for it.
It’s incredible consistency for a franchise that was once mired in the league’s longest playoff drought. From 2016 to 2026, though, Carolina has the third-best regular-season record in the NHL, at 450-248-82 with 982 points. The two teams ahead of it, though? Tampa and Boston, both of which have been to a Stanley Cup Final during that stretch, with Tampa winning it all in 2020 and 2021, while losing in the Cup Final in 2022. Boston reached the final in 2019, at the expense of the Canes in the Eastern Conference Final.
But the Canes’ regular-season success has not translated to deep runs through the playoffs.
Saturday, as the Canes launched an eighth consecutive NHL playoff campaign under Dundon and Brind’Amour, the opening period of the Canes’ 2-0 win over the Ottawa Senators was a microcosm of the past eight years. Carolina dominated play, energized the crowd with several thunderous hits or near-hits, rattling the boards and glass — but had no goals, nor shots on goal, to show for it through nearly 13 minutes.
As the first period came to a close, the nervous tension in the arena was building.
You used to call me paranoid – Pressure But even you cannot avoid – Pressure
The first few seasons after “the drought,” infused with Brind’Amour’s energy and suffocating style of play, the Hurricanes took the league by — ahem — storm. They surprised early, and slowly built themselves into a perennial playoff team. Then, a perennial playoff series winner.
But, there’s always been something standing in the way of further advancement: An untimely injury or two; A tough call or two; A leaky goal or two; A better team or two.
You can forgive Carolina’s most ardent supporters, then, for the touch of paranoia they face now. Sure, the team had another great regular season. Sure, it’s the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Sure, it has the second-most wins in the NHL.
But we’ve all seen variations of these stats in the past eight seasons, only to see losses far earlier in the playoffs than the team’s seeding or apparent talent level.
In Game 1 against Ottawa on Saturday, the Canes more closely resembled their regular-season selves. They outshot the Senators, 8-4. They earned two power play chances — and didn’t score on either. And they scored a goal on straight-up perseverance, with Logan Stankoven catching Linus Ullmark off guard with a slower-than-usual shot from the right circle while tied up by a defender. Still, it was a tenuous 1-0 advantage.
Nowhere to look but inside Where we all respond to — Pressure
So where does most of the pressure fall here? The Hurricanes’ core players who have been here for six, seven or eight seasons? Management for building the team? Or on the broad shoulders of the head coach and franchise icon, who has been inextricably linked to Raleigh since his arrival more than 25 years ago?
To hear the national — and international — discourse, it mostly falls upon Brind’Amour, fair or otherwise. He’s been the constant. His style of play — up-tempo, hard-forechecking, high-volume shooting, defensively accountable — has been at the core of the Canes’ mission from the moment he ascended to the position, hand-picked by Dundon and company. It has also been described as a system of play that lends itself to racking up wins in the regular season, but is too hard to maintain through the grind of the playoffs, during which every game is against a top-16-or-better team.
Does he feel that pressure?
“I don’t think you ever really get over it,” Brind’Amour told NHL.com in March. “Like, you’re always like, ‘Man!’ It fuels you. At the same time, you have to ask things like, ‘What were the reasons we didn’t get it done? Why are we not getting to that next level?’ And then you try to relay it, and to figure out, ‘OK, how do we improve on that?’ And then, I mean, it’s just a challenge, right? At least for this group it is.”
Brind’Amour continued on to defend his players, too, saying the onus has been on him and management to arrange the roster properly to put the players in the right position to win.
“Look, we obviously haven’t reached that final stage where we want,” Brind’Amour said in that same interview, “but I’ve never looked anyone in the eye and go, ‘Man, they haven’t brought everything they could.’ The reality is, we just haven’t been good enough. It would be different if we felt that, man, we were better than that team. But again, the reality has been that we’re just not quite there yet. And so that’s what’s fueled us. That’s why we’re continuing to grab players that we can grab and tweak this and that to finally, you know, get over that last step.”
Saturday, two of those “grabbed” players made all the difference. In the third period, Taylor Hall joined Stankoven on the sheet with his first goal of the playoffs, giving the Canes a late-game cushion.
And then the Hurricanes closed out the game in the most Hurricanes way possible: killing a full 6-on-4 power play with the Ottawa goalie pulled after a delay of game penalty with fewer than three minutes to play.
Talk about nervous energy.
One, two, three, four, pressure!
This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 6:06 PM.
