RALEIGH — The Hurricanes’ top six defensemen missed a combined 23 last season, four of which were in the final two games of the regular season in preparation for the playoffs.
The 2025-26 season is just eight games old, but Carolina’s defense has already lost 11 man games, including missing Jaccob Slavin in the last seven.
The injuries haven’t been limited to just the blue line. Goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov is yet to play this season, forcing rookie Brandon Bussi into action. William Carrier and Eric Robinson were both knocked out in the penultimate game of the Hurricanes’ road trip in Colorado and will miss a chunk of time.
“I don’t know how many guys went out there, but it just felt like every day there was something bad happening,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said of being down six players by the time the team’s six-game road trip came to an end.
But despite playing six of its first eight games of the season on the road, Carolina is off to a 6-2-0 start (Tuesday’s home game against Vegas was after press time) with a patchwork lineup.
“When you see one guy go down, two guys go down, four guys go down,” Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook said Monday, “you’re thinking, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’ … But I thought (the replacements) played well, and (it) just shows the organization’s got some good depth.”
The injuries on defense — to Slavin, Shayne Gostisbehere and, most recently, K’Andre Miller — forced the Hurricanes to suit up three rookie defensemen during the back end of their road trip.
Alexander Nikishin, who made the team out of camp, went from averaging under 17 minutes in the season’s first four games to playing more than 20 in three of Carolina’s next four.
Veteran Mike Reilly, the team’s seventh defenseman, was forced into action when Slavin was injured and has averaged more than 18 minutes a night in his first six games with the franchise.
Joel Nystrom was a last-second call-up made when Miller suffered an injury during the morning skate in Denver. He arrived just before the start of the game, missing warmups, and took his solo rookie lap — a tradition for players making their NHL debut — as the Hurricanes came onto the ice for the start of the game.
“I’d like to know if that’s been done before, come in without a warmup and go into your first NHL game,” Martinook said of Nystrom. “And then he, I thought, was unbelievable that game too.”
Nystrom impressed enough in Denver to earn nearly 18 minutes of ice time in Dallas two nights later.
Charles Alexis Legault, inserted into the lineup when Gostisbehere was hurt, played just under 12 minutes a night in three games before being reassigned to the AHL’s Chicago Wolves, with Domenick Fensore the latest rookie to get recalled. Should Fensore play during his promotion, he’d be the ninth defenseman used by the Hurricanes this season. The team used 10 in the entirety of last year’s regular season.
“I thought the guys we brought up played extremely well under a real tough circumstance, especially some of the opponents that we were playing (were) not ideal for some of your first games,” Brind’Amour said. “I thought they really hung in there.”
The injuries may not be reflected in Carolina’s record, but the Hurricanes have definitely felt the impact of the attrition.
Despite winning 5-4 in a shootout in Colorado, the Hurricanes were overwhelmed much of the game. They then played the Stars pretty evenly in Dallas, losing 3-2, but were outshot for a second consecutive game — the first time that had happened to the team in back-to-back regular season games in nearly a year.
The injuries to Carrier and Robinson took out two players who were off to good starts and gave Carolina four effective lines. Their absence, however, opens the door for Mark Jankowski and rookie Bradly Nadeau — who had an impressive training camp but was caught in a numbers game.
“We know what he can do, he’s capable of,” Brind’Amour said of Nadeau. “He hit the crossbar the other night with just a blazer of a shot. So it’s getting that opportunity. And now (he’s) got to make it count.”
Kochetkov and Gostisbehere both returned to practice Monday, and Brind’Amour said Miller was “around the corner” in his efforts to return to the lineup. For now, the Hurricanes will make do with what they have available.
“There’s 31 teams that aren’t feeling sorry for us in our situation,” Martinook said. “So they’re probably licking their chops to see how many guys are down. But it just puts the onus on the guys that are healthy that we’re in, obviously, a tough stretch with missing some guys, but it doesn’t change our mindset or what we need to do.”
