It's a saying that Carolina Hurricanes fans have heard and parroted quite often.
"We like our team."
However, it's usually being parroted in mockery due to a frustration over a lack of significant moves, but it's important to realize that there is a lot to like about this Canes team.
"We’re all still disappointed, but we still have to look at the past year," said Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell at his end-of-season availability. "We ended up with the second best record in the NHL, three straight division championships, five straight years in the playoffs and with a few exceptions, our core players are young players.
"We started this thing five years ago and our ultimate goal is to win a championship and we took what I believe was another big step towards that. Injuries are part of our game unfortunately, got into a series where we needed some goal scorers and couldn’t come up with enough goals. You’re always disappointed when you don’t win the Cup, you can’t ever be satisfied, but when you look at what we went through, some of the adversity we went through the year and how it turned out for us. It was quite a lot of accomplishments we have to be proud of.”
The Hurricanes were one of the last four teams remaining and despite the Eastern Conference Final ending in a sweep, every game was decided by a single goal and each could have gone either way.
That's not the kind of performance you shake the boat after.
“As a coach, you’re wanting to bring your guys back," Brind'Amour said. "I liked the way we had it. Having Svech there, he would have had a goal here and there. We’re right there with what we have.
But where does the team go from here?
From the main roster skaters, the Hurricanes have Jordan Staal, Jesper Fast, Paul Stastny, Derek Stepan, Shayne Gostisbehere, Calvin de Haan on expiring deals.
That's not too bad considering all of those skaters play either on the bottom-six or the bottom pair. Carolina is set to maintain its entire core for at least another season and still some of those expiring deals may re-sign, and for a team that made it to the final four, that's a pretty good place to be.
But even with their top end players still under contract, the Hurricanes may still be active participants in the trade market this offseason as opposed to big free agency shoppers.
“Free agency on July 1 is probably the most dangerous day in hockey besides the trade deadline," Waddell said. "The one thing being said is that we have a lot of cap space this year, but very rarely does a free agent come on the market and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to sign for one year.’ So we have to be a little bit careful. This is not a one year play, it has to be a long term play in how we look at it.
"I think the trade route is something that we’re going to explore very heavily before free agency. There’s a lot of teams - because the cap is going up only $1 million - that are in similar situations as they were last year, where they have to move some pretty good players. We want to make sure that we’re in a position in talking with those teams, that if something does come up that fits our team, that we be in a position to move on it.”
The Hurricanes are in virtually the same position that they were last year and back then they went out and acquired a goal scorer in Max Pacioretty from the Vegas Golden Knights as a result of Vegas' cap crunch.
However, the Canes don't seem confident that they are counting on the high-end winger being back due to his injury status.
“As far as Pacioretty goes, obviously he’s been through a lot and we don’t know what the future is going to hold there… I don’t even know when he’ll be able to play," Waddell said. "The expectations and all that. He’s still going through a lot of his therapy and treatment and all that. We have to make sure that we don’t get caught counting on something that’s potentially not there. We’ll see how the summer plays out with him.”
So perhaps a similar move may materialize this offseason, but don't hold your breath on the Canes bringing in just a pure goal scorer. They still covet the complete players and one thing they are looking to add is a bit of heaviness.
“We score by committee for the most part," Waddell said. "If you look at how the playoffs went, we had a lot of guys step up. It’s not like we’re looking for a pure goal scorer. We’d like to get a little heavier if possible. That’s something Rod and I have talked a lot about. But we also need some guys like Teuvo [Teravainen] to have a bounce back year. A tough year this year and we know guys like Jarvis are only going to get better. We might have a lot of that goal scoring internally as there’s other things that we’d be able to address too.”
"Are we trying to get better? Of course we’re trying, every team is, but it has to be the right fit," Brind'Amour said. "It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s bring a pure goal scorer in,’ but if he doesn’t fit, it’s not going to really make us better. It’s all about people and the guys we bring in have to fit and be a part of it and understand what we’re trying to do here. It’s not just a goal scorer, it has to be the right fit. Management has done a real nice job of bringing in those kind of people that fit in. Can we get a guy that can score a few? Yeah, that’d be great but it has to be the right fit.
So maybe the Hurricanes take a big swing this offseason like the Florida Panthers and Golden Knights did for players like Matthew Tkachuk and Jack Eichel, two players who the Hurricanes had been in on deep into the processes, or perhaps they'll look pretty similar with a few upgrades here and there, but either way, management is confident that this team can run it back.