Following the Path of the Hurricanes
Can Detroit follow Carolina's sustained level of excellence after 9 years of futility?
Photo: CBS17
In my first post on the Yzerplan, I outlined Ken Holland’s doomed attempt to retool on the fly, and the transition to Steve Yzerman’s patient pursuit of a core that would grant the franchise a long window to compete for championships. As I’ve witnessed the Red Wings get close to qualifying for playoff hockey the past four years before ultimately failing, it reminded me a bit of the Carolina teams which got close to playoff hockey themselves in the late 2010s, only to spit the bit down the home stretch.
The Canes finally broke through in the 2018-19 season, and have spent the past 8 years competing in the Stanley Cup playoffs, with trips to the Eastern Conference Final in 2019 and again in 2023 before finally breaking through and hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup this summer.
This is exactly what Steve Yzerman said he hoped to accomplish when he was announced as the club’s General Manager back in April 2019.
In thinking this through, I found quite a few similarities, as well as some poor decisions that likely set the Canes back, so I decided to write an article that would go into some detail on a franchise that went through similar hardships, yet ultimately rebounded to become a regular participant in the NHL post season and finally a championship team.
So let’s get a sense of what success looks like, Carolina style.
Building Through the Draft
Credit: The Score
Like Detroit, Carolina didn’t hit the NHL lottery jackpot during their 9 years of futility of being frozen out of the playoffs. The closest they came was in 2018 when they picked second overall, missing out on the consensus best player in that draft in Rasmus Dahlin. While their draft pick Andrei Svechnikov has turned out just fine, generating 182 goals while playing on Carolina’s top line, the benefit of hindsight suggests they missed out on 4th overall pick Brady Tkachuk (213 career goals) and 7th overall pick Quinn Hughes (2023-24 Norris Trophy winner).
Detroit famously missed out on Hughes as well with the 6th overall pick in that draft, and while the Canes continue to play Svechnikov on their top line, Ken Holland’s error in that 2018 draft was fatal, as he drafted Filip Zadina, a forward who would only go on to play 262 NHL games while amassing a meager 91 career NHL points.
So even though the Canes didn’t benefit much from draft lottery luck, they were successful in building out a quality NHL roster with their draft capital. Let’s take a brief detour to highlight their successes through the NHL draft while they missed out on the NHL playoffs for nine straight seasons.
Carolina’s Successful Draft Picks
When you go 9 years without playoff hockey, the hope is you will get the chance to draft a Connor McDavid or Macklin Celebrini caliber player. While that didn’t happen for Carolina, they successfully drafted a large number of high quality NHL players. Here are the key players they drafted during this dry spell, as well as my grade for each draft class.
Credit: Canes Country
2010 NHL Draft
1st round, 7th overall: Jeff Skinner
Skinner has had a successful NHL career, playing in nearly 1,100 games while amassing over 700 points.
2nd round, 37th overall: Justin Faulk
Faulk has been a solid top 4 d-man over his nearly 1,100 career NHL games with nearly 500 career points.
7th round, 187th overall: Frederik Andersen
The goalie, who was Carolina’s last pick in this draft, has played in over 500 games and boasts a career .913 save percentage.
2010 Draft grade: A+
Are you kidding me? Three high quality NHL’ers who have played over 2,700 combined games is damn impressive. Carolina’s rebuild got off to a very strong start.
2011 NHL Draft
1st round, 12th overall: Ryan Murphy
This pick didn’t hit, as Murphy only played 175 games and put up 43 points.
2nd round, 42nd overall: Victor Rask
Rask was a success, playing in 500 career games and putting up nearly 225 career points.
2011 Draft grade: C
The general take is if you get one solid NHL’er out of the draft you have done well. Rask gives this draft class a passable grade, but just barely.
2012 NHL Draft
2nd round, 38th overall: Phillip Di Giuseppe
Solid depth forward who played 300 NHL games.
2nd round, 47th overall: Brock McGinn
Another solid depth forward who played 500 games.
4th round, 120th overall: Jaccob Slavin
Jackpot: top pairing d-man who recently hit 750 career games and is an impressive +175 while churning out 300 points.
2012 Draft grade: A+
Slavin alone makes this an A grade, but adding quality depth in the form of Di Giuseppe and McGinn gives this draft class top marks.
2013 NHL Draft
1st round, 5th overall: Elias Lindholm
The Swedish center has already played over 900 games while chipping in over 650 career points.
3rd round, 66th overall: Brett Pesce
Massive win to get a d-man with over 700 career games and who’s gone +76 with a third round draft pick.
2013 Draft grade: A+
Another huge win for the Canes franchise, as they hit on two key positions, with both players combining to play over 1,600 NHL games with over 800 career points.
2014 NHL Draft
1st round, 7th overall: Hayden Fleury
This pick hasn’t worked as well as their other top 10 draft picks, as Fleury has only played 300 games while bouncing around the NHL. William Nylander was taken one pick later, and Nikolaj Ehlers one pick after Nylander. We’ll get back to Ehlers in a bit.
2nd round, 37th overall: Alex Nedeljkovic
‘Ned’ has been a capable goalie as part of a tandem after getting off to a strong start by making the all-rookie team in 2020-21. He’s currently on his 4th team, with a 74 game pit stop in Detroit.
3rd round, 67th overall; Warren Foegele
The winger has had the most successful career of the guys from this draft class, playing in over 500 games with 200 career points and being a +36.
2014 Draft grade: B+
I’m truly conflicted with this draft class. With three legit NHL players, it would typically merit an A grade. The fact Fleury has been on 5 teams, Ned on 4, and Foegele on 3 makes me inclined to drop it to a B+.
Your mileage may vary.
2015 NHL Draft
1st round, 5th overall: Noah Hanifin
Knocked this one out of the park. Rock solid top 4 d-man who has played nearly 800 career NHL games with 350 points. While you can make the case they should have taken Zach Werenski or Mikko Rantanen (more on him later), you can’t complain about drafting a d-man of Hanafin’s caliber.
2nd round, 35th overall: Sebastian Aho
Another dinger. Over 700 career games, 700 career points, +132. Absurd find in the second round of the draft.
4th round, 96th overall: Nicolas Roy
Solid depth forward with nearly 400 games to his name and 190 career points.
2015 Draft grade: A+
Either Hanafin or Aho alone make this an A grade.
2016 NHL Draft
1st round, 13th overall: Jake Bean
This was a miss, as Charlie McAvoy was taken one pick later, with Jakob Chychrun being taken 3 picks later. Bean has bounced around the league with a career high 1378 minutes in 2021-22 and currently plays for Calgary.
1st round, 21st overall: Julien Gauthier
The Red Wings have fished from these QMJHL waters and come up empty, and that’s more or less what happened here. The big winger bounced around the league but never amassed more than 9 goals in a season.
2nd round, 43rd overall: Janne Kuokkanen
Another miss. Got a cup of coffee during two seasons in Carolina before heading off to the Devils.
2016 Draft grade: C
Jake Bean is an NHL caliber depth defender, so like the 2011 draft, this one deserves a passing grade. It’s a bad draft by Carolina standards, but we’re not grading on a curve.
2017 NHL Draft
1st round, 12th overall: Martin Nečas
500 career games, 426 career points, +72, yep it’s another one of those absurd Carolina Hurricanes draft classes.
2nd round, 42nd overall: Eetu Luostarainen
Solid depth forward currently prospering with the Panthers, 400 career games, 160 points, +24.
3rd round, 67th overall: Morgan Geekie
Finally putting it all together in Boston, the big center has appeared in 400 games and has just over 225 career points.
2017 Draft grade: A+
1,300 games amassed, over 300 goals, this is yet another stellar draft class for an organization that at this point had missed the playoffs 8 straight years.
2018 NHL Draft
1st round, 2nd overall: Andrei Svechnikov
In a vacuum, a winger with over 500 career games and 400 points is a win. We’ve discussed the other options available in this draft class earlier, but this cannot be considered a bad draft pick.
2nd round, 42nd overall: Jack Drury
Drury is a success as a depth forward currently playing for the Avs.
2018 Draft grade: A
Svechnikov makes this draft class. It pales in comparison to the best draft classes in Carolina, but this deserves as A grade as the final draft class before the current playoff streak started.
Building a Roster
We’ll get into the weeds on some of the decisions made by Carolina management, but for now let’s build an NHL roster with these draft picks we’ve outlined above, along with a few selections from more recent drafts.
Forwards
Andrei Svechnikov - Sebastia Aho - Seth Jarvis (2020 draft)
Eetu Luostarainen - Elias Lindholm - Martin Nečas
Jeff Skinner - Morgan Geekie - Jackson Blake (2021 draft)
Warren Foegele - Nicolas Roy
Defenders
Jaccob Slavin - Justin Faulk
Noah Hanafin - Brett Pesce
Jake Bean -
Goalies
Frederik Andersen
Pyotr Kochetkov (2019 draft)
Salary Cap implications
If you look at every player listed above and value them based on their current salary for the 2025-26 season — with two exceptions: Jeff Skinner’s current $3 million per year deal (I used his previous $5.725 million salary in Carolina before he was traded to Buffalo), and use Martin Nečas current $6.5 million salary, not the new deal that starts next season — you can build a very competitive team, however it would come in at nearly $2 million above the league’s current $95.5 million salary cap.
The main goal with this exercise was to do a thought experiment and see how well the Canes did in building a competitive lineup via drafting and development instead of trading away players like Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin, Justin Faulk, and Warren Foegele. Holding onto these players would have proven challenging, but this exercise was done to demonstrate two things:
How well they identified talent in the NHL draft
The value of the pieces they eventually traded to build their current Cup winner
With that out of the way, it’s time to take a look at the trades they’ve made to build the best team in hockey.
Hockey Trades Gone Wrong
One thing we’ve seen with Detroit’s prolonged playoff drought is the pressure to ‘do something’. Typically, that something is to make trades to accelerate the rebuild. The hope is you bring in a key player or two who lifts the franchise to being able to compete for a Stanley Cup, the way the trades to acquire Brendan Shanahan and Mike Vernon did in Detroit in the 90s, Dominik Hašek in 2001, and Brad Stuart in 2008.
Those trades, though, were finishing touches on very good teams. Often times, these trades fall flat…or worse.
A perfect example for the Canes was when they traded one of their young defenders. Carolina traded Noah Hanifin to the Flames during the summer of 2018. The defender was traded after his age 21 season, and the Flames subsequently signed him to a 6 year extension.
In return, the Canes received Dougie Hamilton and Adam Fox. While Hamilton was a solid pick up, he only played 3 seasons in Carolina before leaving via free agency for nothing. Fox would have been a massive return given he was acquired when he was 20 years old, was under team control, and would go on to become a Norris trophy winning defender, but from what I understand he made it clear he had no interest in playing for the Canes, and was ultimately traded for basically nothing (draft picks that became Jamieson Rees and Anttoni Honka).
Just when you thought this trade couldn’t look any more lopsided against Carolina, the Canes also included another piece in the trade: center Elias Lindholm. Lindholm flourished in Calgary, setting career highs in points and receiving votes for the Selke trophy based on his strong defensive play.
Carolina’s window was just opening when they made this trade, and none of the pieces they acquired were going to provide a long-term benefit to a team who was just exiting their rebuild.
When The Hockey Trades Hit
While the Canes got burned with the Hanafin trade, they continued to identify targets and make trades. Like the Red Wings, they don’t have a consistent 80 point forward, with Sebastian Aho being the closest.
As Red Wings fans, we’ve looked to the St Louis Blues and their improbable 2019 Stanley Cup championship team for clues to how Detroit could compete without the benefit of an 80+ point playmaking center on the roster. Carolina gives us another example of how to win without a generational talent or enviable depth down the middle of the forward group.
Two trades over the past year served to push the Canes over the top. Let’s review them.
I previously mentioned the Noah Hanafin trade, which created a hole in Carolina’s top 4 group of defenders which was filled for 3 years by Dougie Hamilton. Last year, the Canes were forced to rely on 39 year old Brent Burns and 33 year old Dmitry Orlov as two of their top 3 defenders. In previous seasons they relied on Brady Skjei, who left in the summer of 2024 as a free agent.
As a result, their defensive core has leaned very heavily on Jaccob Slavin the way Detroit has leaned on Moritz Seider. That all changed last summer when the Canes were able to pry K’Andre Miller out of New York. The cost was a steal for the Canes, with Chris Drury receiving Scott Morrow, a conditional 1st and a second round draft pick, both in this summer’s draft. Both picks will basically amount to second rounders, with the first round pick being 26th overall.
The other key piece was acquired in the aftermath of the Mikko Rantanen trade that went sideways. Carolina looked to have pulled off a major coup when they acquired Rantanen from the Avalanche along with Taylor Hall from the Blackhawks in a three team trade prior to the 2025 trade deadline. The trade was costly given the Canes sent Martin Nečas and Jack Drury to the Avs, and looked to be a disaster when it became clear Rantanen wasn't going to extend his expiring contract to remain in Raleigh.
There’s an important lesson to be learned with how Carolina responded when it looked like the Rantanen trade was going to blow up in their faces: they saved face, with a move that likely put them over the top.
Credit: The Hockey Writers
Once Carolina fully grokked the situation with Rantanen regarding his unwillingness to sign an extension, they traded him less than two months later to the Dallas Stars. In return, they received two first and two second round draft picks, along with diminutive forward Logan Stankoven.
The fruits of this trade were astounding: Dallas’ 2026 first round draft pick was used to pry K’Andre Miller out of New York, while Stankoven was arguably the missing piece among their group of forwards, considering he was moved to center and played an enormous role during Carolina’s Cup run, accumulating 11 goals and 16 points over 19 playoff games.
Shortly after Rantanen was traded to Dallas last season, the Finnish forward played a major role in helping the Stars knock his former Avs team out of the playoffs, and it looked like Dallas had clearly won the trade. A little over one year later, that narrative has been completely flipped on its head.
Dallas was a first round casualty this spring and is a team with serious salary cap issues and little in the way of draft capital; Carolina, meanwhile, finally broke through and won their second Cup in team history, has a team comprised largely of players in their 20s, and a very manageable salary cap situation, with only Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s $4.3 million annual cap hit through 2029-30 as an albatross of a contract. Oh, and they still hold their first round draft pick in the upcoming NHL entry draft.
Fortune Favors the Bold
There’s a famous latin phrase that, loosely translated, means ‘fortune favors the bold’ with brave occasionally being substituted for bold. I think this phrase fits the Carolina franchise, as their early trades when they were exiting their rebuild clearly set the franchise back; however they continued to be bold, most notably in their acquisition and subsequent trade of Mikko Rantanen.
What can we take from the Carolina Hurricanes as an example that can make us feel good about the situation in Detroit?
Here are my takes.
We should feel good about the fact the Hurricanes are not strong through the center position.
While Sebastian Aho and Logan Stankoven are a good 1-2 punch, this isn’t vintage Crosby and Malkin or current day McDavid and Draisaitl. I never loved the St Louis example as a team winning without impressive center depth, as that felt more like a one-time opportunity than a period of sustained excellence as we’ve seen with Carolina.
St Louis missed the playoffs the year before they won the Cup, and were trending poorly before turning things around after a coaching change in their Cup-winning season. Since that Cup win, they’ve made it past the first round once while missing the playoffs 3 of the past 4 seasons.
So in my opinion, that wasn’t a great example for how Detroit could win a Cup, but it was a path, so we had to acknowledge it as being an option as the team attempted to pull out of the rebuild.
I’ve long viewed the lack of depth at center as Detroit’s primary issue in attempting to exit the rebuild, and while losing Dylan Larkin will hurt in the short term, Carolina has proven you can win without having elite talent at center. Further, unlike St Louis, they’ve been a very strong team despite questions at the center position, making the playoffs for 8 straight seasons, with four Conference Finals appearances and one Cup winner.
Carolina provides an example of a path to success even if Detroit isn’t able to fill both scoring line center spots with top end talent.
The Canes team was largely built through the draft
While I’ve been critical of Detroit’s North American scouting, the Red Wings have done a decent job building out a prospect pool that was bereft of talent when Steve Yzerman arrived back in Detroit.
It’s worth pointing out that 4 of Carolina’s top 5 point producers this season were Hurricane draft picks. Their top defender and starting goaltender — at least until late in the Stanley Cup playoffs — were also Carolina draft picks.
They’ve also used players they’ve drafted — players like Noah Hanafin, Elias Lindholm, Jack Drury, Martin Nečas, Eeetu Luostorainen, Jake Bean and Nicolas Roy — as trade pieces in attempts to improve their roster.
It’s important to point out that not all of these trades moved the needle, but the ones that did — in particular the Nečas trade — put them over the top. They continued to deal until they found a lineup that clicked.
If you look at a few key players on the Carolina team, you can see some comparables on Detroit.
Jaccob Slavin = Moritz Seider
Sebastian Aho = Lucas Raymond
Nikolaj Ehlers (free agent signing) = Alex DeBrincat
K’Andre Miller (trade acquisition) = Simon Edvinsson
Now Carolina has much better depth, and when you combine that with a coherent system that has full buy in from the front office, coaching staff, and players, it is truly more than the sum of its parts.
The hope, at least from my standpoint, is that the eventual Dylan Larkin trade can serve the same role for Detroit that the Martin Nečas trade ultimately served for Carolina. Now I don’t expect Steve Yzerman to extract a player in return of Mikko Rantanen’s stature at the time of the trade, but if the Red Wings GM can acquire a young player who can turn into an 80+ point playmaking center, that would address the one remaining hole in the rebuild.
You must dominate beyond the top of the draft
Like Detroit, Carolina had little in the way of top 5 draft picks. However they prove you can build a Cup winner by drafting well outside of the top half of the first round. Jaccob Slavin and Sebastian Aho are two perfect examples of how top level scouting can unearth high level NHL players outside of the top of the draft.
Who knows what their plans would have been for Morgan Geekie if not for the Seattle expansion draft? The fact they made him available suggests they didn’t foresee his development that’s taken place in Boston, but selecting him in the third round is yet another sign their scouts are among the best in the business.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that 106th overall pick Jackson Blake led the team in playoff scoring.
I’ve long criticized Detroit’s North American scouting, and my hope is we’ll hear about changes to this group following the upcoming draft. Steve Yzerman should identify the best in the business and then bring them to Detroit.
You must be ruthless and fill team needs through trades
Too often when we review winners like the Canes, we choose only to highlight the wins, the moves that put them over the top. To an extent that’s totally understandable, but I think it’s also important to point out the trades that did absolutely nothing, or even had a negative impact.
Would the Canes have won sooner if they held onto centers like Elias Lindholm and Eetu Luostarinen? They eventually broke through without dominant center depth, so it’s ultimately a moot point, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that there are almost always trades that don’t work in your favor.
Dougie Hamilton and Vincent Trocheck were both ‘win now’ acquisitions that didn’t clearly move the needle during their short stints in Carolina. This is why I’ve been hesitant to embrace short term ‘win now’ trades in an attempt to get the Larkin core into the playoff picture.
Fortunately, the pressure to make those trades should be gone with Dylan Larkin requesting a trade. But that doesn’t mean the team should sit on their hands and wait for their prospects to develop. Sure, there are several prospects who I expect to play key roles in Detroit, but with the 4th rated prospect pool, Steve Yzerman has enough talent to address a few key needs.
There have been plenty of rumors suggesting Yzerman has been active in seeking trades to bolster his roster, and at the end of the 2024-25 season, he responded to Helene St James’ question on spending money for free agents by saying he’d happily sign a player via free agency who was worth $10+ million in annual salary.
One of those players was Nicolaj Ehlers, who had no interest in Detroit given the long playoff dought. Carolina, on the other hand, with an 8 year playoff stretch, was exactly what Ehlers sought, and he played a key role in pushing the Canes over the top.
The other? Mitch Marner, who also made no time for Detroit; he signed with Vegas and had as good a claim as anyone on the Golden Knight roster to the Conn Smythe trophy.
This is to say that anyone who thinks Steve Yzerman is content with the current state of the roster either has an agenda or clearly doesn’t follow the team closely. Detroit’s general manager must bolster his scouting department, make trades to address team needs, and eventually marquee free agents will want to come to Detroit.
So while I never loved the ‘let’s follow the St Louis Blues model to a Stanley Cup championship’ rallying cry, I can fully get behind the sustained success of the Carolina Hurricanes as a path Steve Yzerman and Todd McLellan should pursue with the hopes of eventually opening up Detroit’s window to once again compete for a championship.