Fan favorites Necas, Burns, and Drury step back onto Carolina ice, confronting their former team for the first time.
The Carolina Hurricanes will be welcoming back a trio of fan favorites tonight when they host the Colorado Avalanche.
Martin Necas, Brent Burns and Jack Drury will all back at Lenovo Center for the first time since moving on from Carolina.
Necas spent parts of eight seasons with the Hurricanes after being drafted 12th overall in 2017.
The speedy Czech winger recorded 113 goals and 298 points in 411 games as a Cane and also led the team in scoring in 2022-23.
Necas is a talented and offensively creative player who provided the team with quite a few memorable moments.
Now with the Avalanche, he's been a perfect fit with Nathan MacKinnon, where he's already registered 30 goals and 79 points across his two partial seasons in Denver.
Drury spent parts of four seasons with Carolina after being drafted in the second round of the 2018 draft.
The steady center had 15 goals and 46 points in 153 games and a 56.5% faceoff win percentage as a Hurricane.
With Colorado, Drury already has put up 11 goals and 21 points in 72 games as the team's 3C.
Both were traded to the Avalanche last year as part of the Mikko Rantanen trade.
Burns has at least played in Raleigh as an opponent before, but this will be the first time he's had to in years.
The NHL iron man spent three seasons in Carolina after being traded for in the summer of 2022.
Burns played 246 games with the Hurricanes and put up 34 goals and 133 points as part of the team's top pairing with Jaccob Slavin.
The 40-year-old blueliner still has it too, as he has five goals and 20 points in 39 games with Colorado, averaging 19:26 per game and being a key part of the league's best penalty killer.
Burns left this offseason as a free agent.
"I'm happy for those guys," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "I hate that they left. We kind of gave them three great players and I'm like, 'That'd be nice, right now.' But they're not just great players, they're all great people and that's the part that hurts the most more than anything. When you lose good people, it's hard to replace."
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