Holding Court: Carolina Hurricanes Reach Elite Eight, Among Stanley Cup Favorites ...Middle East

Carolina Hurricanes Reach Elite Eight, Rank Among Stanley Cup Favorites

By David Glenn

Here are four key questions as the Carolina Hurricanes enter the “Elite Eight,” or the second round of the 2025 National Hockey League playoffs, after eliminating the New Jersey Devils four games to one in their first-round series.

#1. Are the Hurricanes among the favorites to win the Stanley Cup this year?

Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything close to a sure thing. One aspect of the NHL playoffs that’s different than those of many other team sports is that the favored teams aren’t typically heavy favorites. In other words, you’re not going to find a team that enters the postseason with a 50 or even 20 percent chance of winning the championship very often. That theme remains solidly in place this year, even after the playoffs’ first-round results. According to MoneyPuck.com, a hockey analytics website, the Canes currently are considered the slight favorite to win the Stanley Cup. (The odds change daily.) That’s a bit unusual, because Carolina didn’t even win its own division this year and ranked only 10th in the league (among 32 teams) in regular-season points.

Here’s the breakdown of the website’s six favorites heading into Wednesday’s games:

Rank/Team (Regular-Season Results) — Odds To Win Cup (April 30 Update; Odds Change Daily)

Underlining the difficult nature of winning even in the first round of the NHL postseason, no team was considered to have more than a roughly two-thirds (67 percent) chance of advancing to the second round. The Hurricanes, who nearly swept New Jersey (their only loss was on the road in double-overtime), were considered to have only a 57 percent chance of defeating the Devils in the teams’ best-of-seven, opening-round series.

Carolina’s likely opponent in the second round is the Washington Capitals, who had the second-best regular-season record (51-22-9, 111 points) in the entire NHL and rank as the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. The Capitals and Hurricanes finished first and second in the Metropolitan Division, respectively, so the Capitals would have the home-ice advantage in this matchup, just as the Canes had the home-ice advantage over the third-place Devils.

Carolina Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho (20) celebrate his game-winning goal with Seth Jarvis (24) during the second overtime period of Game 5 of an NHL hockey first-round playoff series against the New Jersey Devils in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Photo via AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker.)

#2. Aren’t the Hurricanes well past the point where merely making the playoffs, or even winning their first-round series, is considered a good season?

Yes.

When Texas-based billionaire Tom Dundon purchased the Hurricanes and then quickly hired franchise legend Rod Brind’Amour as the team’s head coach in May 2018, the Canes had just completed an embarrassing nine-year run (2009-10 through 2017-18) in which they didn’t make the playoffs — in an era when the postseason bracket still included more than half the league’s teams — even a single time.

Now, in the immediate aftermath of that nine-season playoff drought (one of the longest in NHL history), Carolina has made seven consecutive trips to the playoffs to begin the Dundon/Brind’Amour era. Only the Toronto Maple Leafs (nine), Colorado Avalanche (eight) and Tampa Bay Lightning (eight) have longer, active streaks of success in that regard.

Thanks in part to the Hurricanes’ two trips to the Eastern Conference finals — in 2019 and 2023 — and in part to the fact that the Canes have won at least one playoff series in each of these past seven seasons under Brind’Amour (he’s the first to accomplish that feat at the start of his NHL head coaching career), there is absolutely no “happy to be here” element to the postseason in Raleigh, among the coaches, players or fans.

While some Carolina supporters have a “Stanley Cup finals or bust” attitude toward this year’s team, the reality is that the Hurricanes had only the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference this season, behind Washington, Toronto and Tampa Bay.

It would have been viewed as a massive disappointment if the Canes didn’t get past a lesser-record, weakened-by-injury New Jersey team in the first round. Now, though, the competition is about to get much, much tougher, so anything can happen.

Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) defends against New Jersey Devils’ Dawson Mercer (91) during the third period of Game 5 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup first-round playoff series in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Photo via AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker.)

#3. What are the biggest lingering questions about the Hurricanes’ chances of winning it all?

Goal-scoring and goaltending.

Generally speaking, the #1 doubt about the Hurricanes over the past seven seasons has been whether they have enough offensive firepower to continue their winning ways in the playoffs. At times, their offense has wilted versus bigger/strong postseason opponents or against an elite or red-hot playoff goaltender.

While the Canes ranked ninth in the league in goals (3.24 per game) during the regular season and were especially efficient during five-on-five play, they had none of the league’s top 30 goal-scorers. Rising star Seth Jarvis (32 goals, 35 assists) and All-Star veteran Sebastian Aho (29 goals, 45 assists) offer tremendous skill, production and entertaining play, but will they get enough help from their teammates when the going gets tougher?

Carolina attempted to solve this lingering issue with the midseason acquisition of high-scoring Colorado star Mikko Rantanen. (The Canes gave up one of their top offensive players, Martin Necas, as part of that deal.) When it became clear that Rantanen wasn’t interested in re-signing with Carolina after the season, though, he was dealt to Dallas just before the NHL’s trade deadline.

Now the offensive support for Jarvis and Aho likely will have to come from some combination of forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Logan Stankoven (acquired in the second Rantanen trade), Taylor Hall (part of the initial Rantanen deal), Jack Roslovic and Jackson Blake, plus defense-first veteran Jordan Martinook and team captain Jordan Staal. Defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, who runs the team’s top power-play unit, also can be a dynamic offensive weapon.

Similarly, at goaltender, Carolina has two intriguing players but nobody who is considered truly elite.

Injuries limited veteran Frederik Andersen to only 22 starts (13-8-1) during the regular season, and he was knocked out of the New Jersey series with yet another injury, forcing the Hurricanes to insert talented-but-volatile backup Pyotr Kochetkov (27-16-3) into the starting lineup for Game Five on Tuesday night. The Canes won the game, 5-4 in double overtime, but Kochetkov looked very shaky early, when the Devils took a 3-0 lead in the opening 10 minutes.

Andersen, 35, led the Anaheim Ducks to the Western Conference finals 10 years ago and has solid postseason credentials (41-31, 2.42 GAA, .915 save percentage) overall, but he also has had major playoff disappointments while with both Toronto and Carolina. Kochetkov, 25, has only three career starts in the NHL playoffs.

Meanwhile, four of this year’s top playoff contenders have starting goalies who were spectacular during the regular season: Washington (Logan Thompson), Toronto (Anthony Stolarz), Tampa Bay (Andrei Vasilevskiy) and Winnipeg (Connor Hellebuyck). Another dangerous team, Florida, has a proven veteran netminder (36-year-old Sergei Bobrovsky) who helped the Panthers win the Stanley Cup just last season.

#4. Who is Alexander Nikishin, and why is he considered a wild card in this year’s playoffs?

The most exciting aspect of this story is that Nikishin, a 23-year-old Russian defenseman who was drafted by Carolina in 2020, has finally signed a contract with the Hurricanes, after proving himself as one of the top players in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) over the past several seasons.

The KHL is widely considered the second-best hockey league in the world, behind only the NHL, and Nikishin’s play for SKA Saint Petersburg over the past three campaigns solidified him as the best defenseman in the world who wasn’t yet playing in the NHL.

A lot of dominoes had to fall in the Hurricanes’ favor for Nikishin’s arrival to occur in time for this year’s NHL playoffs. His Russian team was eliminated from the postseason on April 11 rather than extending its season. The SKA Saint Petersburg owners, knowing they had leverage because of the Canes’ urgency, had to agree to reasonable compensation for an early termination of Nikishin’s contract. The player then endured complicated, lengthy visa and travel complications before finally arriving in the United States on April 18.

In terms of pure ability, the only Hurricanes defenseman who would rank clearly ahead of Nikishin is 30-year-old Jaccob Slavin, who has been the best “defensive defenseman” in the entire NHL for many years now.

However, it could take a while for Nikishin to learn Carolina’s system, especially with a major language barrier in play. The Hurricanes’ other three Russian players — Kochetkov, Svechnikov and especially fellow defenseman Dmitry Orlov — have been helping as translators, having become functional in English during their time in the NHL, but it’s not yet clear when or even if Brind’Amour will feel comfortable throwing Nikishin directly into the intensity of postseason play.

David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

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