The NHL’s 2023 off-season continues to unfold, and our spotlight is now on the 2023-24 regular season. 

In this ongoing series, we’re going alphabetically, team by team, one by one, through each of the league’s 32 franchises and pointing out their 2022-23 season’s highs and lows, as well as discussing what’s in store for them next season. Time to get right to it:

2022-23 Grade: A

The Hurricanes had a solid-enough offense in 2022-23, but more often than not, it was their defense that won them enough games to finish first in the highly competitive Metropolitan Division. 

Their goals-against average of 2.56 was second only in the league to the leviathan Boston Bruins (2.12). That wasn’t as much of a result of having an all-star goalie in net – veterans Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta were good enough, but hardly Vezina Trophy candidates – as it was of having one of the game’s best defense corps.

The even better news for Canes fans is that all four of their top four blueliners are under contract for the 2023-24 campaign. Veterans Brent Burns, Jaccob Slavin, Brett Pesce and Brady Skjei – each of who averaged at least 21:48 per game last year – have a combined salary cap hit of $19.855 million per PuckPedia, giving Carolina GM Don Waddell all kinds of cap flexibility to bulk up at forward this off-season.

Even with star winger Andrei Svechnikov and veteran winger Max Pacioretty out of the lineup for much of the regular season and playoffs, the Hurricanes managed to make it to the Eastern Conference final. Although they were swept by the Florida Panthers in Round 3, all four games were one-goal games, with two of them ending in overtime. With a little better fortune here and there, Carolina could’ve been in the Stanley Cup final.

So long as the Canes have the defense they do, it doesn’t matter who plays in net. Their goalie is going to benefit from their mobile blueliners. Once Waddell uses the $26.6 million in cap space to bolster their group of forwards, the Hurricanes are once again going to be one of the pace-setters in the East.

Although the Canes have some exciting young performers, they don’t have a player on the caliber of David Pastrnak or Connor McDavid. This is why Waddell needs to go out, either on the trade market or in free agency, and bring them above-average talents at forward – say, a Patrick Kane or Vladimir Tarasenko kind of player. 

Given they’re well regarded as a Cup front-runner, the Hurricanes won’t have trouble attracting interest from veteran players. But Waddell does have to be judicious, as, with 15 players on their active roster for 2023-24, he still needs to have a certain amount of balance as to what he can afford to pay to flesh out the lineup.

The other key issue for Carolina is goaltending. 

Andersen and Raanta are UFAs this summer, and with youngster Pyotr Kochetkov providing a healthy, cheap option as their No. 2 goalie, the Hurricanes likely won’t be bringing both Raanta and Andersen back. 

One of those two? Yes, very possible, if not probable. But if they’re going to adequately replace the six UFAs they have at forward, the Canes will need to limit their goaltending salaries. Another option could be a UFA goalie like Semyon Varlamov or Cam Talbot. But carrying three goalies on the NHL roster is a luxury most teams can’t afford, and this is true of the Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes won 52 games last season, with only Boston winning more. They did so without key components of their roster for long stretches of time. Full credit to coach Rod Brind’Amour for continuing to prove he’s one of the game’s best bench bosses who keeps his team’s keel straight, night in and night out.

Carolina also has an extremely motivated owner in Tom Dundon, who isn’t afraid to spend to the cap ceiling to try and win it all. Dundon looks at 2023 Stanley Cup champion Vegas and sees a team he wants his Hurricanes to be: relentless, hungry and speedy. 

With one or two notable additions up front, the Canes will certainly have the right balance of youthful exuberance and veteran know-how to be playing their best hockey come playoff time. 

Carolina had enough in the tank to knock off a fairly good New York Islanders team and a very good New Jersey Devils team in the first two rounds of this year’s playoffs, and acquiring a proven commodity at forward could be the final piece of the championship puzzle for them.