By Sean Gentille, Shayna Goldman and Dom Luszczyszyn Jake Guentzel , Teuvo Teravainen , Stefan Noesen , Brady Skjei , Brett Pesce — the Carolina Hurricanes lost a lot of talent this summer. That’s more than enough to significantly downgrade a perennial powerhouse, but it’s not enough to push one of the league’s best systems entirely out of the contender’s circle. Not with capable external recruits ready to fill out the depth and strong internal improvement on the horizon.
Add that to a strong core group, and the Hurricanes aren’t going anywhere. Carolina is still going to be a force. The projection Carolina is an annual threat for 110 points and that was true before Guentzel was acquired.
Before the trade, the Hurricanes were 37-19-6, a 106-point pace — that’s the baseline we’re working with here. Still, putting the Hurricanes at 103 points may feel like a tough sell after they lost their entire second pair and a top-six forward. Advertisement While the replacements may not look very impressive on the surface, they’re more than adequate depth pieces that should continue to give Carolina strength in that department.
The real key will be whether internal options can fill the rest of the value void. The model thinks it can. That’s based on assumptions regarding players taking on bigger roles ( Martin Necas and Dmitry Orlov ) and internal growth ( Seth Jarvis , Andrei Svechnikov and Pyotr Kochetkov ).
There’s a path forward for the Hurricanes to maintain t.