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Some say it’s a reach that the Carolina Hurricanes are close to putting a winning team on the ice, as players like Jeff Skinner have yet to taste playoff hockey.
The struggles can be traced to a few cold, hard facts.
Where To Go From Here?
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The signing of “cornerstone” players Eric Staal and Cam Ward to lucrative long-term, no-trade contracts, in retrospect, was not wise. Both players would not be considered superstars, yet are paid as such for their respective positions. Case in point: Staal failed to make the Canadian Olympic team in the prime of his career and Ward has been injury prone and statistically at the tail end of a list of his goaltending contemporaries.
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The firing of coach Peter Laviolette less than two and a half seasons after winning the Cup was confusing at best, and short-sighted at worst. Since leaving the Canes, Laviolette has taken the Philadelphia Flyers to the Cup finals and energized a Nashville franchise in the rugged Western Conference.
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A playoff drought has translated into an inability for the club to land any big-name free agents of note. The one scorer the Canes did sign in the last five years is a player – Alexander Semin – who hasn’t lived up to his billing. After one successful shortened season here, Carolina gave the Russian winger a long-term deal, but heading into mid-February Semin had just two goals … and hasn’t participated in media functions in three seasons.
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A lack of talent development in the minor league system is alarming. The team’s promising young players – Jeff Skinner, Justin Faulk and Elias Lindholm – mostly received “on-the-job” training in the NHL and logged little developmental time in the minors. The rest of the once top prospects – Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman, Zac Dalpe, Brian Dumoulin, Jon Matsumoto, Jerome Samson, Jeremy Welsh, Bobby Sanguinetti and Bryan Rodney – are no longer in the organization or have not panned out.
carolina hurricanes miss playoffs for sixth straight season By David Droschak One can argue that no professional franchise in sports history has failed to capitalize on a major championship like the Carolina Hurricanes. Next season will be the 10th anniversary of the Stanley Cup team. Maybe the Caniac fan base can “celebrate” that accomplishment since they’ve had little else to cheer about over the last decade. After an 0-6-2 start for a team that many predicted would finish last in the entire league anyway, the probability of the Hurricanes making the playoffs never rose above 20 percent, attendance plummeted at times to Greensboro Coliseum levels, and for a sixth straight campaign the club packed up the sticks, pads and pucks by mid-April. Carolina has qualified for the postseason just once (and they had to rally to do that in 2009) since stunning the hockey world, bringing one of sport’s most coveted trophies to the Tar Heel state in June 2006. What has gone so wrong on the ice at the PNC Arena since then? Perplexed fans, once loyal to a fault, have stopped tailgating in masses, put their car flags in the trunk and mothballed their jerseys, wanting to know if and when the franchise will field a winning team again. 32 | midtownmag.com
Hall of Famer Ron Francis now holds the key to the car as the team’s general manager. Many believe it’s time to map out a different direction for a franchise that’s seemingly lost since reaching the pinnacle of the sport a decade ago.