Carolina Hurricanes primed for big moves and a breakout 2017-18 season

It’s that time of the NHL season where a few fan bases start buying playoff tickets while the rest turn their attention to the NHL playoffs. Elimination is no fun. But it shouldn’t color your whole fandom with tears. Just most of it. Seventy percent of it.

This is the 30 percent: SB Nation NHL Silver Linings, where we send hockey’s eliminated teams into the offseason with five good things to remember from this season.

Once again, we didn’t expect much from the rebuilding Carolina Hurricanes. And once again, the rebuilding Hurricanes flirted with the Eastern Conference wild card race for about two or three months before finally bottoming out.

So, once again, Carolina fans are left without the playoffs but plenty of optimism. Let’s discuss.

Kind of.

Cam Ward and Eddie Lack were among the league’s worst goalie tandems last season. So Carolina jumped into the goalie market before it even opened, trading for Blackhawks backup goalie Scott Darling last Friday.

Darling, 28, would’ve been the most prized free agent goalie on July 1. He still could be: Carolina owns negotiating rights, but he could turn them down and test free agency anyway. But it’s hard to imagine Darling doing so. Between the penalty killing and elite young defense, the Hurricanes are one of the better spots for a new goalie to land.

Carolina just got a lot tougher to score on.

Frustration through suffocation.

That’s the feeling you get watching your team’s power play trying to wrangle scoring chances against the Hurricanes’ penalty kill. Carolina (84.2 percent) was one of two non-playoffs teams to finish in the top ten in PK percentage this year (Florida was the other).

Why is this so encouraging? Well, they did it with youth. Elias Lindholm, 22, logged 89 minutes on the kill. Joakim Nordstrom, 25, led forwards with 134 minutes. 22-year-old defensemen Jaccob Slavin (255 minutes) and Brett Pesce (177 minutes) logged monster numbers.

Penalty killing is a tough thing to teach. And even if you have a good system, getting young players to commit and excel is even tougher. Carolina already has both down pat, which is a huge strength for a rebuilding franchise.

Jeff Skinner was already Carolina’s best forward but he finally reached elite status with a 63-point, 37-goal campaign, his best since winning the Calder Trophy as a rookie. Don’t be surprised if he gets the captaincy this summer.

Carolina used the fifth overall pick in 2013 on Lindholm, but he struggled to produce offensively since. That changed last year. From our brethren at Canes Country:

According to stats.hockeyanalysis.com, among forwards who skated at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 play, Lindholm was 7th out of 351 players in terms of 5-on-5 primary assists per 60 minutes.

That’s about as good of a metric as we have to determine the quality of a playmaker, and Lindholm was downright elite in what turned into a breakout year for him as the season wore on. The only players who finished ahead of him were Ryan Getzlaf, Connor McDavid, Nick Schmaltz, Johnny Gaudreau, Henrik Zetterberg, and Evgeni Malkin. I’d say that’s decent company to be in, wouldn’t you?

Meanwhile, rookie winger Sebastian Aho flirted with the Calder Trophy race with 24 goals and 49 points.

It’s a safe bet to assume Avalanche center Matt Duchene will get traded this summer, and suitors will line the block for him. Few teams have the assets Colorado wants. The Hurricanes are one of those teams.

Young, good defensemen are Carolina’s specialty. They could offer some combination of Justin Faulk, Haydn Fleury, Roland McKeown, Jake Bean and a top pick or two for Duchene and still be fine defensively.

The fifth overall pick in the 2015 got thrown in the deep end as an 18-year-old rookie defenseman. Hanifin was decent as a rookie and decent-to-good as a sophomore. But there are signs he’s growing into the No. 1 defenseman Carolina expects him to be.

As Canes Country points out, Hanifin earned more minutes after Ron Hainsey was traded to Pittsburgh at the trade deadline.

All you want out of super-young NHL defensemen is steady improvement. Hanifin (and the Hurricanes) might be on the verge of a breakout year.