After a historic Stanley Cup run, the Hurricanes return with high expectations. Identify the undrafted defenseman poised for a surge and the late-blooming goaltender ready for stardom.
Puck drop is nearly here, and with training camps opening across the league, it's officially fantasy draft season. It's been a busy offseason, full of blockbuster trades, big-name signings and roster overhauls that are only just starting to settle.
We're going team by team to help you prepare, flagging a sleeper worth stashing, a breakout candidate ready to take off, and a bust that might not be worth the price you'll pay to draft him. Next up: the Carolina Hurricanes.
Carolina put together one of the best seasons in franchise history in 2025-26, finishing 53-22-7 for 113 points, the best regular-season record in the Eastern Conference and second in the league behind only the Presidents' Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche.
The Hurricanes carried that dominance into the playoffs, opening 12-1 through their first 13 games, sweeping both Ottawa and Philadelphia before knocking off Montreal in the Eastern Conference Final. They capped it off by beating Vegas in six games in the Stanley Cup Final, capturing the second championship in franchise history.
With largely the same group returning, Carolina enters the year as one of the favorites to be right back in the thick of the postseason picture.
Sleeper: Jalen Chatfield
As the Hurricanes advanced further through their Stanley Cup run, more and more people started to notice the undrafted defenseman who had claimed a starting job on Carolina's top pairing. After averaging over 20 minutes a night during the regular season, Carolina leaned into him even more in the playoffs, pushing his average up to 22.5 minutes per night.
That trust let Chatfield showcase his defensive game while also chipping in offensively. He finished the regular season with 17 points in 72 games, a 0.24 points-per-game pace, before that number jumped to 0.42 in the postseason on eight points in 19 games.
Chatfield earned plenty of praise around the hockey world as a genuine standout on a championship roster, yet in fantasy circles he's still going almost entirely undrafted, sitting outside the top 400 players and rostered in zero percent of Yahoo leagues.
If he can carry his playoff form into this season and produce in the range of 30-plus points, that would put him in the same scoring conversation as defensemen like Philip Broberg, Simon Nemec, Justin Faulk and Jacob Trouba.
He also brings added value depending on your league's format, having tied for the team lead in blocked shots during the playoffs with 34 and finishing the regular season tied for 33rd among defensemen in plus/minus at plus-15, ahead of names like Broberg, Charlie McAvoy and Matthew Schaefer.
With basically no draft cost attached, Chatfield is worth monitoring early in the season as a potential waiver-wire pickup who could turn into a legitimate depth option on your fantasy blue line.
Breakout: Brandon Bussi
The ranking here is notably high for a 28-year-old entering just his second season, but Bussi has proven at every level that he's a gamer. Bruins fans knew Boston was losing a good one when he departed, given the near-perfect numbers he'd posted at the AHL level, and he finally got his NHL opportunity with Carolina.
The Sound Beach, New York native delivered in a big way as a rookie, posting a 31-6-2 record with a 2.47 goals-against average and a .895 save percentage in 39 games, all while sharing time with Frederik Andersen and Pyotr Kochetkov.
With Andersen now in Edmonton, Bussi is set to take over as Carolina's clear number one after signing a three-year deal with the club. He'll get the bulk of the workload this season behind a Hurricanes defense that posted a historically low 2.05 goals-against average this past postseason and returns almost entirely intact.
The price tag reflects the hype, with Bussi ranked just inside the top 12 netminders in the league at 90th overall and an average draft position as high as 74th, making him a seventh- or eighth-round pick in some leagues.
It's a steep cost for someone with just one season on his resume, but after watching how dominant Carolina's defense can be, Bussi looks like a strong bet to hold onto the starting job all year.
Bust: Alexander Nikishin
This one might raise some eyebrows, but plenty of other Hurricanes defensemen saw their roles grow in the postseason while Nikishin's shrank.
The 24-year-old Russian import saw his ice time drop from an 18-minute regular-season average down to under 15 minutes a night in the playoffs. He'll still be a factor on the power play as the quarterback of the second unit and figures to settle into a third-pairing role, but with other defensemen like Chatfield breaking out and playing their best hockey when it mattered most, that shift in usage could carry over into this season.
Nikishin managed just a single point in the playoffs while Chatfield produced eight, and if that gap in trust and ice time persists, it presents a real risk to his fantasy value, especially if the rumors are true and he gets traded elsewhere.
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