Everything’s going wrong for the Hurricanes ... who haven’t missed a beat
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Hurricanes sustain 5-0-0 start despite multiple injuries and lineup upheaval.
- Depth players Miller, Nikishin, Reilly and Jarvis absorb roles and drive results.
- Upcoming West Coast stretch vs. elite opponents will test resilience and depth.
Everything has gone wrong at once!
Jaccob Slavin missed all of training camp, played two games and has disappeared again with a mysterious knee injury. Pyotr Kochetkov is already injured. Big free-agent signing Nikolaj Ehlers has yet to record a point, let alone score a goal. Andrei Svechnikov has fallen all the way to the fourth line. Some guy named Brandon Bussi no one heard of a month ago has started two games in net.
And now Shayne Gostisbehere is hurt, too? He’s only tied for second on the team in scoring.
In the past, it often took an awful lot less than all of that to derail the Carolina Hurricanes as they went crisscrossing the country on the annual State Fair road trip.
And these guys?
Not a blip.
Saturday’s overtime win at the Los Angeles Kings — thanks to a fourth Seth Jarvis game-winning goal — kept the Hurricanes a perfect 5-0-0 on the season, weathering a storm of considerable proportions without any visible strain, in part because for everything that’s gone wrong, so much else has gone right.
Newcomer K’Andre Miller has made a seamless transition to the blue line, filling the sizable gap left by Slavin’s absence. Alexander Nikishin has fully evolved from his NHL internship last spring. Jarvis has been a stone-cold killer. Jordan Staal has turned back the clock, with help from a fully healthy William Carrier.
And so on and so forth.
This is the mark of a truly mature team, where a player as talented as Svechnikov can be demoted all the way down the lineup and not be missed, where a combination of adversity and travel that would be too much for many teams to surmount is hardly noticed.
With the Hurricanes halfway to chasing down the nine straight they won to open the 2022 season, what’s notable is how easy they have made how hard it has been look. Slavin is irreplaceable, and his curious injury status is the one real cloud of concern hanging over the season. Gostisbehere left Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury. And yet not only have the remaining defensemen met the challenge, Mike Reilly stepped into the lineup without missing a beat.
For all the talk about Miller and Ehlers, and for good reason, the free-agent signing of the veteran Reilly remains the offseason move that filled the Hurricanes’ most longstanding need: A seasoned depth defenseman who can slide in and out of the lineup without complications or complaint. That’s been most readily apparent in the postseason — most notably the emergency promotions of Nikishin and Scott Morrow last season — but Reilly’s value is on full display right now.
The Logan Stankoven experiment at center appears to be working well enough, and Jarvis and Sebastian Aho have done more than enough to carry the load offensively, which means the Hurricanes have been able to take a combined zero from Ehlers and Svechnikov without feeling any pain. Ehlers, at least, looks dangerous.
And Bussi, claimed on waivers four days before the start of camp, played well enough in his debut to earn the start Saturday in Los Angeles, saving the Hurricanes from wearing the tread on Frederik Andersen’s tires early with Kochetkov out.
It does get more difficult now: The next four games, the first three on the road to finish out the trip, are all against legitimate Western Conference contenders: Vegas, Colorado, Dallas, Vegas. This stretch will provide a better barometer of how well the Hurricanes are weathering their troubles than the California sweep just completed.
But 5-0-0 is still 5-0-0, which no other team can say. The Hurricanes’ ability to safely clear a series of hurdles that would trip up so many other teams is a testament to their depth, resilience and talent. They need Slavin back sooner than later. They need Gostisbehere’s absence to be short given his importance to the power play. They need Ehlers and Svechnikov to put the puck in the net.
All of which is to say: They’ve been good enough to win every game they have played so far despite everything that has gone wrong. Which means they can still get better.
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This story was originally published October 19, 2025 at 10:56 AM.
