The Hurricanes had only weight room workouts Sunday, one of the few times during training camp they won’t be on the ice in preparation for the Oct. 11 regular season opener against the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning.
There’s a lot to figure out before then, and the three preseason games this week — the first Tuesday in Tampa Bay followed by a home-and-home Friday and Saturday against the Stanley Cup champion Panthers — could start to move those pieces into place.
Early camp injuries
It’s not training camp without bumps and bruises, and Carolina already has a few.
Defenseman Riley Stillman — son of Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup champion Cory Stillman and one of seven players in camp whose fathers played in the NHL — has been on the ice for all of Carolina’s practices so far but has worn a yellow, no-contact sweater.
Rookie Scott Morrow, the team’s top defensive prospect in camp, left the team’s first practice last Thursday and missed the skates on Friday and Saturday with a lower-body injury. Coach Rod Brind’Amour said Friday he thought the 21-year-old would be back for the next day’s practice, but Morrow was again watching from the stands as the second group, made up primarily of prospects, skated.
There was some good news on the injury front. William Carrier, one of the team’s free agent signings this offseason, pulled up during the bag skate at the end of the team’s first practice and struggled to get off the ice. Brind’Amour said testing revealed Carrier’s lower-body ailment was only day to day and was “nothing serious.”
100% Svech?
Speaking of injuries, people often say it takes a full year to recover from reconstructive knee surgery. Andrei Svechnikov hit that milestone in March, but he enters this year with the ability to go full bore during training camp.
“I think even in the playoffs, my leg was a little hurt,” Svechnikov said Friday.
Svechnikov said he felt like his leg was at full strength during the playoffs, but he admitted he was still having some swelling in his right knee.
“This coming season, it’s not going to happen anymore like that,” he said, “which is going to be a little bit easier.”
Svechnikov also said it was stressful to not be able to do everything he wanted to do last year in preparation for the season, so he’s glad to have had this summer and camp to do the same work everyone else is doing.
He also fit in some fun over the summer. On top of returning to Russia for two months, he spent five days in Dubai, his first trip to the United Arab Emirates’ destination city.
“Everyone should go there,” he said.
Goalie depth
It should be an interesting camp for goaltenders Frederik Andersen, Pyotr Kochetkov and Spencer Martin.
“I think it’s all up for grabs,” Brind’Amour said when I asked how he envisioned using his goalies this season. “We’ve always kind of shared the workload, and that’s really, I think, served us well.
“Honestly, we’ve got two good ones, and we’ve got Marty here too if something happens. So I think we feel pretty good about that position, and we really haven’t given it much thought.”
Behind those three are two goalies, Yaniv Perets and Ruslan Khazheyev, who have never played an AHL game (Perets did play 13 minutes in an NHL game last season after an emergency recall). Brind’Amour isn’t overly concerned with that lack of experience.
“I think if you’ve got three guys you can count on, that’s pretty good,” he said. “I don’t envision too many teams have four guys and worrying about that far down. If you get that far down, then you’ve had disaster hit. The other guys are unknown, but I think we feel pretty good about them.”
Carolina, by the way, has had at least four goalies make a start in four of Brind’Amour’s six seasons behind the bench.
Eyes on the rookies
At every training camp around the league, GMs, coaches and fans are watching their young players, especially the ones who have a shot at making the team.
That’s no different in Raleigh, where the Hurricanes entered camp with a buzz surrounding Jackson Blake, Bradly Nadeau, Felix Unger Sorum and Morrow.
Other than Morrow missing some time at the start of camp — he would need someone in the top six to get an injury to have a shot at an opening night start anyway — it’s too early to judge who might be making an impression.
The trio of forwards have skated together in drills, with Unger Sorum playing in the middle — something he hasn’t done as a pro overseas. Nadeau had probably the most noticeable moment of the prospect group’s three days of camp so far, ripping a one-timer shortside past Martin. If Nadeau makes the team, no one will be worried about his shot being up to snuff in the NHL.
Forgotten first-rounder
With the buzz focusing on some of the team’s top prospects — Russian defenseman Alexander Nikishin also sucks up a lot of oxygen despite still being in the KHL — 2019 first-rounder Ryan Suzuki is often forgotten.
Suzuki has been the definition of a hard-luck player since being picked 28th overall by the Hurricanes five summers ago. A right eye injury suffered while playing in the OHL in his first season after being drafted left him with a permanent blind spot.
The injuries have piled up in the years since. He’s had the eye issue and back surgery, and two years ago, he missed most of training camp. Then last year, he was hurt late in camp. Overall, he’s played just 161 regular season games during four AHL seasons, never playing more than the 51 he played a year ago with AHL Springfield.
“Last year I felt I had a really good preseason and kind of showed the coaches and the management what I can bring to the team moving forward,” he said after the first day of camp Thursday. “And obviously getting hurt in that last game was pretty disappointing.
But I feel like that’s kind of been the story my career so far is, you know, battling back from injuries and stuff like that. I take pride with a setback like that — I always seem to come back a little bit stronger.”
The clock is ticking for Suzuki, who turned 23 in May.
“It happens quick,” he said of being one of the older prospects in camp. “It felt like just yesterday I was the 18-year-old coming in here, and now we’ve got probably more than half the guys here younger than me.”
Suzuki said being assigned to Springfield — along with since-traded defenseman Dylan Coghlan — last year because the Hurricanes didn’t have an AHL affiliate was “not ideal,” but he said playing for the Thunderbirds worked out well. He finished with 14 goals and 30 points.
That said, he’s looking forward to returning to Chicago, where he played his first three pro seasons, this season if that’s where he should land.
“I was really happy to find out that they’re going back to Chicago again,” he said.
