Carolina Hurricanes are big winners in 2017 NHL offseason

The Carolina Hurricanes have been building toward this for a while. The last time the franchise reached the Stanley Cup Playoffs was in 2009, when a team led by an old Ray Whitney and a young Eric Staal reached the Eastern Conference Finals before getting swept by Pittsburgh.

Since then, it’s been a slow process of building the Canes back up. They’ve been unable to land the kind of transformational superstar that others have constructed their rosters around. Most teams start their turnaround with a Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews. Those kinds of talents have eluded GM Ron Francis since he got the gig in 2014.

That hasn’t stopped him from doing his job, though. The Hurricanes have built up one of the most intriguing young cores of talent in the NHL, led by Sebastian Aho, Noah Hanifin, and Jeff Skinner. They seem to be on the cusp of bigger and better things thanks to Francis’ shrewd dealings.

This summer was potentially the final step in getting Carolina back to playoff-contender status. With a series of smart moves that addressed flaws and added experience to the roster, the Hurricanes have finally put together a team that’s ready to be competitive again in the Eastern Conference.

Based on Goals Above Replacement, a statistic that tries to boil down the contributions of each player into a single number, the Hurricanes have had the best offseason of any NHL team by far.

So what did Francis do this summer that’s been so wildly successful, and why such optimism surrounding a team that’s been in the draft lottery for nearly a decade? Let’s run through all of Carolina’s brilliant moves from the best offseason of any team in hockey.

Darling hasn’t proven he can be a full-time starter in the NHL yet, but his performance as a backup with the Blackhawks over the past three seasons was fantastic. It suggests he’s ready for a bigger role.

A .923 save percentage would make Darling one of the best starting goalies in the league. Even if his numbers take a slight dip while adjusting to a larger workload, he should be an immediate upgrade upon what Carolina had before.

Last season, the Hurricanes finished with an .899 save percentage (fourth-worst in the league) with Cam Ward and Eddie Lack between the pipes. At 5-on-5, their .913 save percentage was second-worst in the league, ahead of only the Avalanche. This is why Carolina finished 26th in 5-on-5 goals allowed per 60 minutes, per Natural Stat Trick, even though it was 11th in 5-on-5 shots allowed per 60.

So the Hurricanes were already an above-average possession team last season, but they were undone by middling finishing ability and outright terrible goaltending. If Darling can fix the latter, it will go a long way toward turning Carolina into a playoff team.

All of this for a third-round pick and a reasonable four-year contract.

The Hurricanes already assembled an exciting group of young forwards, including Aho, Skinner, Teuvo Teravainen, Victor Rask, and Elias Lindholm. This summer, they added a pair of talented, experienced veterans in winger Justin Williams and center Marcus Kruger to the mix.

The costs to acquire both players weren’t high. Williams signed a two-year deal worth $4.5 million annually, which is a no-brainer for a three-time Stanley Cup winner coming off a 24-goal season. He was one of the key players on Carolina’s championship team in 2006, and the reunion was a perfect development 11 years later.

Kruger came over in a trade from the Vegas Golden Knights that cost the Hurricanes a fifth-round pick. The defensive-minded center’s cap hit is a bit much at $3.08 million, but it’s only for two years. He also immediately gives the Hurricanes a top-notch fourth-line center who can kill penalties and tilt the ice even with the toughest of assignments.

Theoretically, Kruger should be able to take some defensive pressure off the Hurricanes’ young forwards by eating up defensive zone starts. Combined with Derek Ryan, Carolina has a pair of quality bottom-six options up the middle now.

This one won’t have a direct impact next season given that Slavin was signed anyway, but his seven-year, $37.1 million extension is precisely what great teams need to keep building: cost certainty on a high-level defenseman at a relatively affordable price.

Slavin may not be the biggest name on Carolina’s defense, which also features Justin Faulk and Hanifin, but he’s just as important. Last season he finished 20th in Norris Trophy voting after recording a career-high 34 points in 82 games.

And despite having a more defensive role than some of his teammates, Slavin still put up a 52.8 percent even strength Corsi and plus-2.5 percent Corsi Relative, according to Hockey-Reference. So he was consistently having a positive impact driving possession in addition to strong offensive production.

The Hurricanes were going to have Slavin in the lineup next season either way, but now they can confidently build the defense around him over the next eight seasons with a $5.3 million cap hit that doesn’t break the bank.

Sometimes the real winners in NHL free agency are the teams that opt not to participate. The open market can be a cruel place to operate with a hard cap hanging over you.

The Hurricanes, to their credit, executed this offseason while almost entirely avoiding free agency. Other than the signing of Williams, they didn’t make a single significant move in that area.

Instead, the Hurricanes targeted good players for trades, specifically from the Blackhawks. A year after hooking up for the Teravainen/Bryan Bickell deal, they acquired Darling directly from Chicago, then added a pair of former Hawks in Kruger and Trevor van Riemsdyk in deals with Vegas.

The Hurricanes didn’t give up much: a third-round pick for Darling, a second-round pick for van Riemsdyk, and a fifth-round pick for Kruger.

In doing so, they acquired three players whose contracts aren’t likely to hurt the team much down the road. Darling’s four-year deal has some risk involved, but the upside is massive. It’s a guarantee that somebody else would’ve given him a similar deal if the Hurricanes didn’t.

Van Riemsdyk remains a bargain at $825,000 as a solid right-handed, third-pairing option. Kruger’s deal might be a tad rich, but the Hurricanes shouldn’t have any issues over the next two years because their fourth-line center is slightly overpaid. It’s a luxury the Blackhawks couldn’t afford, and their trash has often become other teams’ treasures.

The Hurricanes had loads of cap space to go after big names in free agency, but they showed restraint. Now the team has just $44.6 million locked up in 11 players for 2018-19, and $26.6 million locked up in five players for 2019-20. There’s a lot of flexibility to make sure that guys like Aho, Hanifin, Teravainen, and Lindholm can be re-signed over the next two years.

Carolina didn’t need to go shopping in free agency, so it largely didn’t. Other teams could stand to learn lessons from this.

The biggest variable seems to be whether Darling can step up as a good NHL starter, but if that happens, the Hurricanes will be in the mix in a deep Eastern Conference next season.

They’ve addressed two of their biggest issues by adding a goal-scorer in Williams and a goalie in Darling. If they can replicate those good possession numbers with improved shooting and goaltending, it may be hard to keep them out of the postseason next spring.

And the Hurricanes did all this for a few picks and short-term deals, while maintaining the ability to continue building their young core for a bright future. Winning in the offseason isn’t as good as winning the actual games, but Carolina has set itself up nicely.