Hurricanes learned hard lessons from playoff elimination. Then, their plan came together
The postmortem after the Carolina Hurricanes’ elimination at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning some 10½ months ago was stark and unsparing. The Hurricanes were tested and found wanting on several fronts. Their inadequacies were all too exposed, the gap between themselves and the NHL elite all too apparent.
There were times, even, during the first-round series against the Nashville Predators that the Hurricanes looked like they were on the verge of coming undone. Jaccob Slavin’s injury — not that he’s ever replaceable — exposed a near-fatal lack of defensive depth. Fans cheered Alex Nedeljkovic in goal, but players and coaches clenched their teeth at times, especially the completely unacceptable game-winner in Game 1 of the Tampa series that left the Hurricanes playing from behind.
Over the next three months, the Hurricanes underwent significant, and sometimes unpopular, changes that saw favorites like Nedeljkovic, Peter Mrazek, Brock McGinn and Warren Foegele moved out, Dougie Hamilton allowed to leave and a general turning-over of nearly every corner of the roster.
After 82 games and the best season in franchise history, it’s safe to say the plan came together. This is a different team than it was at this point a year ago: deeper, more confident, not without its flaws but possessed of uncommon resilience and explosiveness — its strengths reinforced, its weaknesses largely addressed.
“Where we really excelled, in my opinion, was the depth part of it,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “When we had injuries, when we had holes to fill, we didn’t miss a beat.”
All of the changes the Hurricanes made last summer were designed to get them to just this point: Not merely into the playoffs, but far better equipped to handle the rigors and challenges ahead, on nearly every front.
Goaltending? Not only did Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta deliver a substantial improvement on their predecessors, they won the Jennings Trophy for the fewest team goals allowed for the first time in franchise history. And even with Andersen’s status for the first-round in doubt, there’s complete confidence in Raanta to handle the load, with late-season rookie phenom Pyotr Kochetkov already battle-tested and waiting in the wings.
“I was probably the most unpopular guy in the community when we got rid of our goalies,” Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell said. “We obviously had talked about it. We knew there were four or five guys available in free agency and a couple more through trades. Our goalies two years ago, not last year, two years ago were good but when we got into the playoffs we just felt that we needed to be better. That’s why we rolled the dice.”
Defensive depth? The Hurricanes aren’t going to have to rely on a gimpy Jake Gardiner or a guy making his NHL debut in the heat of a playoff series like Max LaJoie last season. Tony DeAngelo and Ethan Bear may have gotten most of the attention at the time, but the addition of Brendan Smith and Ian Cole gave the Hurricanes a pair of veteran warhorses who have seen everything and won’t be awed by the circumstances. And even if there’s some tidal wave of blue-line injuries, the unheralded Jalen Chatfield came up from Chicago (AHL) and earned his teammates’ respect in 16 games of work.
And on what’s primarily a young team that’s quickly gaining postseason experience, the addition of seasoned players like Derek Stepan, Smith and Cole can only be a stabilizing force in a room that’s relied heavily on Jordan Staal and Jordan Martinook for energy and counsel in past playoff runs — probably the next best thing to another Justin Williams cameo comeback. And he may be young, but no one on the roster went deeper into the playoffs than Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who went to the Stanley Cup final with the Montreal Canadiens last year.
If the Hurricanes didn’t do much at the trade deadline, again — adding only a depth forward in Max Domi amid tight salary-cap constraints — it’s partly because they did their work not in March, but in July and August. The team’s success this winter and its promise this spring were both born last summer, the result of introspection in the wake of frustration, an honest appraisal of who needed to go and what needed to improve to not only get back to that point, but beyond.
And then they went out and did it.
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This story was originally published April 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM with the headline "Hurricanes learned hard lessons from playoff elimination. Then, their plan came together."
