Five days short of five months since the Hurricanes’ 2023-24 campaign ended, hope springs anew with the team’s start to the new NHL season Friday with their opener against the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning at the recently rebranded Lenovo Center.
1. The puck drops on the season against a somewhat familiar face. Jake Guentzel, acquired at the trade deadline in March from the Penguins, spurned the Hurricanes’ advances on a contract extension and instead signed with the Lightning. Guentzel essentially replaced Steven Stamkos, Tampa Bay’s longtime captain and face of the franchise, who reluctantly left Cigar City for Nashville.
It’s a new era in Tampa, but Victor Hedman, the team’s new captain, was excited to see Guentzel in his Bolts debut.
“Jake, his stint here last year, think he left a lot of marks with the way he played,” Hedman said after Friday’s morning skate of the winger’s time with Carolina. “So we’re excited to come back here and get his first game with us against his former team.”
Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour had nothing but praise for Guentzel.
“Very, very good player,” he said. “When you coach against someone, you kind of know, and then when you get somebody with you for a while and get to see every shift, every second of how they do things, you have a different appreciation.
“He’s definitely a top-end player, for sure. He thinks the game really well. That’s why he was sought after.”
Guentzel has nine goals and 11 assists in 21 career regular season games against the Hurricanes.
2. The NHL announced Thursday that Saturday’s scheduled back end of the season-opening home-and-home between the Hurricanes and Lightning was being postponed due to the aftereffects of Hurricanes Milton.
Tampa Bay’s players, staff, and their families have been staying in Chapel Hill since Tuesday, leaving Florida well before the storm was set to make landfall. The move led Lightning GM Julien BriseBois to declare team owner Jeff Vinik “the best owner in sports” for accommodating families on top of team personnel.
Still, it’s less than ideal conditions for Tampa’s players, who had things on their minds other than the start of the NHL season.
“Obviously a different kind of preparation with two hurricanes, so it’s been a little bit different preseason,” Hedman said. “But probably on the bright side, we spent more time together and get the new guys acclimated.”
Lightning coach Jon Cooper said his team is ready to play after a weird few days leading up to the opener.
“There’s no doubt it’s been a distraction, but I will say I think the guys are really looking forward to the game because it’s been a little bit of ‘Groundhog Day for a while’ in the sense that we’ve been on the road for quite some time just to come play one game,” he said. “I think the saving grace in this is most of the guys have their families with them, so that’s really helped. But playing the hockey game is what the guys are really looking forward to, and so I shouldn’t anticipate a distraction.”
Hedman said his and other players’ homes were OK following the storm, though Cooper said there is still cleanup to be done.
“The power’s out in many of the places, including most of our players and myself,” he said. “I guess the one good thing is it’s not extremely hot there right now, so the weather’s kind of cooled a bit. So I think that’s helped, but a lot of cleaning up going on, I’ll tell you that.”
3. Cooper said he got a tour of Cameron Indoor Stadium and met retired Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski courtesy of Blue Devils lacrosse John Danowski, who was Cooper’s lacrosse coach at Hofstra in the late 1980s. He also toured the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, noting he didn’t realize how close the rival campuses are.
While spending so much time in the Triangle isn’t familiar for the Lightning, Friday’s opponent certainly is. Hedman and Cooper said that even though the Hurricanes retooled their roster this offseason, they know what they’re facing in the opener.
“We know exactly, pretty much, what we’re gonna get,” Hedman said. “Their coach has been with them for a long time. We know the way he likes to play, the aggressive style they want to play.
“Their core is pretty much still intact — obviously a few changes, but we expect them to play the same way they always have. We’ve seen them a lot, so hopefully we can take advantage of some miscues early on and see where we go from there.”
Cooper —the longest-tenured coach in the NHL; Brind’Amour is fourth — agreed with that assessment.
“I’ve been here for a number of years, and so has Rod, and I think that we’re pretty familiar with how each other play,” Cooper said. “He’s been really successful with the way his teams have played. And it seems, regardless if he gets skill guys or workers or checkers, he gets them all to buy into the system. So it works for him, but there shouldn’t be any surprises.”
4. One surprise will be who starts in goal for the Hurricanes. Brind’Amour wouldn’t disclose his opening starter Friday morning.
“That whole thing would have been easy, then: you play one and the other, and it’s not a big deal,” Brind’Amour said of the schedule initially being a back to back.
Now, Carolina won’t play again until Tuesday when the Devils come to Raleigh.
“At the end they, we’re going to stick with how we were going to roll it out,” he said of his Game 1 starter. “I kind of debate do I want to get going through this rabbit hole every game of you guys asking me. I think what I might do is just say I’m not going to tell you the starter. … If I decide to, then I can, but you guys can just wait like everybody else, just for now. We’ll see if that works because it’s the same question 82 games.”
Whether it is Frederik Andersen or Pyotr Kochetkov will de determined during warmups. The Lightning will certainly have Andrei Vasilevskiy in their net.
5. The Hurricanes assigned center Tyson Jost to AHL Chicago on Friday, again putting them under the salary cap and not dipping into their long-term injured reserve pool.
So what does all this maneuvering mean? I broke it down into something more digestible.
For @TheAthletic: How the Hurricanes are using contracts, LTIR and waivers to maximize their salary cap space. https://t.co/2xEQFskYGb
— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) October 10, 2024
