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. The former Winnipeg Jet who was nearly a point-per-game player last year joined a core of mainstays like Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis and Andrei Svechnikov.
Jarvis (32) and Svechnikov (31) lead the Hurricanes in goals, while Aho (27) leads the team with 80 points as the top-line center. Then there’s Ehlers with 26, 22-year-old forward Jackson Blake with 22, Logan Stankoven — the primary return in the deal that sent Rantanen to Dallas – with 21 and captain Jordan Staal with 20.
Throw in former league MVP Taylor Hall’s 18 goals, and the Hurricanes have developed three lines’ worth of reliable scoring.
Ehlers’ arrival, in particular, has helped that while offering the potential of being the kind of finisher the Hurricanes have needed in postseason exits, including two of the past three years in the Eastern Conference Final. It took him 12 games to find the net as he settled in but he’s thrived with 18 goals since the start of 2026, much of that coming with his January move as the scorer on a checking line wth Jordan Staal and Jordan Martinook.
That has inluded Ehlers — nicknamed “Fly” in a nod to his skating speed — ranking second on the team with 10 power-play goals. That, along with using Staal to win faceoffs on the top power-play unit, helped Carolina rank fourth with the man advantage (24.9%).
“Obviously we have more plays this year and switched things up a little bit, but I think the guys in the spots they are fit perfectly,” Jarvis said. “Having Jordo kind of take that faceoff and win it for us and get possession right away so we can run our plays is huge. And then adding Fly coming on the break with that much speed, it makes zone entries a lot easier.”
Carolina’s 291 goals were second only to Colorado in the league, 25 more than last year and 14 more than its previous high in the current eight-season playoff run. It’s also five more than the Brind’Amour-captained 2005-06 team produced before winning the Cup.
“It’s a nice thing to have, for sure,” Stankoven said. “It’s been like that all season. There’s certain times where different guys are chipping in, and it’s great because then it makes it harder for other teams to try and get their matchups. There’s not just one line or a couple guys to shut down, so it goes to show how much depth we have and it’s a good thing to have going into playoffs.”
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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Aaron Beard, The Associated Press
