The Carolina Hurricanes head coach spoke on Shayne Gostisbehere and William Carrier. At Wednesday's practice, the Carolina Hurricanes went back to a familiar look for their struggling number one power play unit. With Shayne Gostisbehere — the team's usual PP1 quarterback and top scoring defenseman — sidelined due to injury, Brent Burns was once again back up running the top unit. The unit was: Brent Burns, Martin Necas, Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis. Ty Smith had been getting the opportunity to run PP1 originally in Gostisbehere's absence, but with the top unit only having one goal in six games, something had to give. Burns is no stranger to the power play and in fact, 44 of his 118 points with Carolina have come on the man advantage. The veteran blueliner had been the team's PP1 quarterback since he arrived in 2022 before losing the gig this year after a tough postseason. The team had been using Gostisbehere since the start of the year and the results have been very promising, however, due to his injury and the lack of success with Smith, the team needs to try something else to help tie them over. While the 39-year-old blueliner is definitely showing signs of decline, he's still a very talented player who knows his way around the offensive zone and again, the team just needs to find a stopgap until Gostisbehere returns.
