At long last, Hurricanes’ core group’s effort is validated with a Stanley Cup
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Jaccob Slavin is the longest tenured Hurricanes skater after Jordan Staal.
- Jordan Staal has been with the Hurricanes for 14 years after a 2012 trade.
- Sebastian Aho, Jordan Martinook, Andrei Svechnikov and Jordan Staal remain from that era.
Only in professional sports can 14 years feel like a lifetime.
Such was the feeling for Jaccob Slavin, the longest tenured Hurricanes skater on this 2026 Stanley Cup Champion team after Jordan Staal.
Staal — who had already won a Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh — has been with the Hurricanes for 14 years, as well, after a trade in 2012.
Sebastian Aho’s “forever” was more like 11 years.
Those three players remain on the Hurricanes’ roster from the “before” times — before Tom Dundon assumed ownership of the team; before Rod Brind’Amour was named the head coach.
Add in Jordan Martinook and Andrei Svechnikov, who joined the Canes the same season as Brind’Amour, and that core five has been through a lot with this franchise.
And they’re not shy about reminiscing, especially in the aftermath of an historic win.
“It’s been a long wait, a lot of disappointment, a lot of all kinds of feelings not being able to go all the way,” Aho said frankly as the minutes ticked from Sunday night into Monday morning. “Honestly, the wait and the work is all worth it. It’s unbelievable.”
Slavin, ever pensive and thoughtful in his answers, paused his family celebration as his children bounced along around the ice with him.
“Each season brings its own story, right?” Slavin said, taking a moment to consider his answer. “We definitely had close calls, close calls, close calls, and now to finally get over that hump and be here, and get the job done, it’s hard, but at the same time, it’s awesome.”
Other than Staal, Slavin has put in the most time with the Hurricanes of any player. He remembers well playing in front of half-empty arenas, and playing only 82 games a year before watching the playoffs from home.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Staal said. “The first couple years, we couldn’t make playoffs, couldn’t fill the stands, and now we’re here, and we got the Cup, we got the job done. There’s so many amazing people in our organization that got it to be at this point.”
One of those people within the organization that’s had plenty to do with its championship rise is general manager Eric Tulsky, who began with the Canes in … 2014. He ascended from part-time analytics consultant to general manager over 10 years, and his fingerprints are all over this team’s constitution.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Tulsky said Sunday. “This team has been built the right way for a long time, and just gotten better and better year after year and we finally got where we wanted to be.”
Martinook, often called a “glue” player, or a “heart-and-soul” player by his teammates and coaches, came to Carolina from an Arizona organization that struggled to achieve success in the postseason. All Carolina has done since Martinook arrived is make the playoffs – and make deep runs — only to fall just shy of the ultimate goal — a Stanley Cup championship.
“We’re over the hump now, right?” Martinook said, a wide smile gleaming through months of beard growth.
“It just shows sometimes, you’ve got to fail to succeed,” Martinook added. “Obviously we wish we would have won it more, but it doesn’t matter, we won it this year, and that’s all that matters.”
The trick to the Canes’ ultimate success, of course, was blending the Canes’ core and the team’s newcomers, a job tasked to Brind’Amour. Under his tutelage, the Hurricanes finally reached the top – together.
“It takes everyone,” Brind’Amour said. “And we are a family. It’s a cliche, but I’m telling you, this is what we have here. We built something really special, and it’s been there for a long time. It just never quite was able to crack through, and finally we did here.”
The next question — after the team celebrates, of course — is whether the Canes can add to the string of recent repeat Stanley Cup champions, add to the legacy this team — this core group — has established in Raleigh.
“Once you get a taste, and it hasn’t really even sunk in yet and I haven’t even tasted it yet,” Martinook said. “We’re going to celebrate our (butts) off and then regroup.”
Even Tulsky, who is always saying the team is “always looking to get better,” had an addendum to his reply Sunday:
“This is a hell of a team, it just is,” Tulsky said. “We’re always looking to get better, but it’s an incredible team where it is now.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 7:00 AM.
