Carolina Hurricanes head into the playoffs showing more scoring punch with depth, Ehlers' arrival
MORRISVILLE, N. C. (AP) — The mission has long been the same for the Carolina Hurricanes in building a perennial playoff contender around a collective effort to wear down opponents with an aggressive forecheck and pressing the attack.
This year, they've gotten production throughout the lineup in a way they haven't seen in decades. The Hurricanes enter the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the top seed in the Eastern Conference with Game 1 at home on Saturday against Ottawa in a first-round series. It comes after they scored more regular-season goals than they had at any point since the former Hartford Whalers relocated to North Carolina before the 1997-98 season.
They are the only NHL team with seven different players having scored at least 20 goals, a first for the franchise since the Whalers had eight in 1986-87. “I think like we've said all year, whatever way the game goes, I feel like we can do it, we can handle it,” coach Rod Brind'Amour said Thursday. “If it's low-scoring and tight, I know we're pretty good at that, too.
And then clearly we've added some pop, and if the game ends up 6-5, we can figure that out, too. I like that about our group. ” The question with the Hurricanes entering their eighth straight playoff trip remains whether they have enough finishers to come through with a course-altering goal in a pressure-packed postseason series.
They traded for forwards like Jake Guentzel in 2024 and Mikko Rantanen last year , only to have to deal both away — Guentzel in sending his rights to Tampa Bay before his expected departure in free agency, Rantanen when it become clear he wouldn't sign a longer-term deal. This time, the Hurricanes made a free-agency splash by signing Nikolaj Ehlers to a six-year, $51 million deal with an average annual value of $8. 5 million.