Taking Stock of the Canes’ Possible Playoff Opponents

The Carolina Hurricanes have defeated their first playoff opponent in each of their seven seasons in which Rod Brind’Amour has been behind the bench.

The quality of those teams has been a mixed bag. In 2019, they slayed a behemoth in the reigning Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals. In 2022, they knocked off a 107-point Boston Bruins team in a seven-game thriller.

More recently, they’ve gotten quality draws to start their bids for the Stanley Cup. Last year, it was a banged up New Jersey Devils group without Jack Hughes and some key defensemen that never stood much of a chance. The prior two seasons, it was very pedestrian New York Islanders squads.

With seven straight years with a playoff series won, the Hurricanes are tied with the Islanders dynasties of the early 1980s for the third-longest such streak. They’re two away from catching the Broad Street Bully-era Flyers, and three away from tying two different iterations of the Montreal Canadiens for the longest streak in NHL history.

If Carolina wants to run that stretch to eight this spring, it’s going to have to defeat a better team than it has the past few first rounds.

Here’s a look at the candidates the Canes could face in mid-April, where they stand, and what could make them a challenging matchup.

Montreal Canadiens

If the season ended today and went by raw points and not points percentage, this would be the matchup. It’s an interesting one.

Comparing just the skaters, Montreal is close on paper. The top line of Juraj Slafkovsky, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield is up there with any in the league.

Lane Hutson and Noah Dobson provide oodles of offense from the back end, and Ivan Demidov is living up to the hype with 47 points in 58 games in his rookie season.

They’re not just top heavy, either. Oliver Kapanen is a quality young forward in a depth role, and when healthy, they have capable size and defensive ability with a bit of scoring touch littered all over their bottom six.

There’s one big problem though. Montreal’s goalies can not stop a beach ball. Jakub Dobes is rocking a .892 save percentage, and incumbent starter Sam Montembeault is having a nightmare season at a .874. Rookie Jacob Fowler has been solid with a .904 in his 10 appearances, but it’s hard to see this franchise turning the crease over to a rookie in such a high-leverage playoff opportunity for this emerging, young team.

The time for being happy just to be there was last year when the Capitals handled them in five. There are expectations this time. If the Habs add a goalie at the deadline, look out. Otherwise, Carolina would likely be able to survive a team with that as a major issue.

Buffalo Sabres

No. No, no, no. No thank you. That is what I say to the idea of drawing the Buffalo Sabres in a playoff series.

Are the Hurricanes better? Definitely. Should they win on paper? Certainly.

But there is something about these teams coming off of extended playoff droughts finally getting their chance in the dance that puts out some major team-of-destiny energy.

The Sabres have been absent from the Stanley Cup Playoffs since all the way back in 2011. That drought is the longest in the league by far, and it’s even longer than the one the 2019 Hurricanes snapped.

Do you remember how excited you were to have playoff hockey back in Raleigh in 2019? Do you remember the home ice advantage the fans created in that first-round series against a superior Capitals squad?

That’s what facing off with Buffalo invites. A talented team with a nothing-to-lose mentality with a rabid fan base ready to make life miserable for an opponent.

That’s to say nothing of this very talented roster led by Olympic gold medalist Tage Thompson and Swedish star Rasmus Dahlin on the back end. This defense is way deeper than you’d expect. Mattias Samuelsson has taken massive steps forward, and Bowen Byram has improved. Michael Kesselring needs to get healthy, but you throw him into the mix with the other three and then add former first overall pick Owen Power? Loaded.

Josh Doan, Ryan McLeod, Jack Quinn and Peyton Krebs add quality young-ish depth up front to go with veterans Alex Tech and Jason Zucker.

Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen are finally providing strong goaltending, as well.

Boston Bruins

If the Sabres are a surprise because they’re overcoming their recent history, the Bruins are a surprise because they’re delivering better results than the talent on the roster suggests they should be capable of.

David Pastrnak is of course the star up front, but old friend Morgan Geekie has broken out as a bonafide top-end goalscorer, and fellow old friend Elias Lindholm has bounced back from a disastrous effort last season to provide some level of competency down the middle.

Center is still the weak point in Boston, though, as goalie Jeremy Swayman is back into form this season, and Charlie McAvoy leads a solid, even if unspectacular, unit on the backend.

While a glance at the roster suggests a ho-hum team, the emergence of entertaining young players like Fraser Minten, Alex Steeves and Marat Khusnutdinov have exponentially increased the watchability of these Bruins compared to their counterparts last year.

This is another team on this list against whom the Hurricanes would be favored, maybe even pretty comfortably, but it’s another roster that if it gets hot for a couple weeks could present some big issues.

Detroit Red Wings

This is an interesting one. Detroit checks all the boxes for a worthy playoff team. They’ve got star players at center in Dylan Larkin and defense in Moritz Seider.

They also have a pair of impactful wingers in Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond at the top of their lineup.

John Gibson provides solid play between the pipes, and they’ve already shown to be a challenging matchup for the Hurricanes in the regular season.

Simon Edvinsson and Axel Sandin-Pellikka provide strong upside on defense, but the forward depth is a possible issue here in a playoff series.

The Wings, like every team in the top half of the Atlantic, have been playing incredible hockey for a while now. If the Hurricanes face one of these Atlantic teams, it could look comparable to that 107-point 2022 Bruins squad that finished fourth in the division.

Washington Capitals

After a shockingly strong regular season that saw them claim the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference in 2024-25, many predicted a fall back to earth for the Capitals.

Not many were brave enough to peg them as a team outside the playoffs entirely, but that’s where they sit right now. A big win over Vegas on Friday helps their chances, but they’re two points behind a Bruins team that has three games in hand on them for the second wild card spot at the time of this writing.

But if the Capitals were overrated last year when the Canes sent them home with relative ease in the second round, they’re underrated this season.

Logan Thompson is still the sort of goalie who can steal a series. They still have the sort of physical, defensive buy-in from most of their forwards that translates well to the spring. Jakob Chychrun, Alex Ovechkin and Aliaksei Protas provide valuable finishing ability.

The lack of elite talent up front will hold this team back, but with all the other ingredients, Washington is not a first-round matchup I’d be clamoring for personally.

New York Islanders

This is certainly not your grandfather’s New York Islanders, but it’s definitely not your New York Islanders either.

Sure, Patrick Roy is still the coach, and they’re still largely dependent upon goaltender Ilya Sorokin turning in elite performances on a regular basis, but there’s something different about this team from the past iterations the Canes have easily sent home in the spring.

It’s largely about Matthew Schaefer, the jaw-droppingly good rookie defenseman who has taken the league by storm as he waltzes to the Calder Trophy.

He’s a minute-munching blue liner who skates like the wind and has a finishing touch that would put many quality top-six forwards to shame. He recently broke the record for most goals by an 18-year-old defenseman.

Throw in a quality one-two punch down the middle consisting of Bo Horvat and a newly healthy Mathew Barzal, and while the Isles need more time in the oven to be a real contender, they have a much higher ceiling than they have in recent years.

They’re 33-21-5, currently third in the Metro, and it would require a really strong push from Washington for the Islanders to fall into the wild card mix. If it happens, Carolina would be favored, but write this Islanders squad off at your own peril.

Columbus Blue Jackets

I’m not going to devote a ton of time to the Jackets here. They’re currently six points out of the playoffs, but they could still get in.

They’ve turned a corner since hiring Rick Bowness as their head coach following the dismissal of Dean Evason, but a loss to Boston in their first game back from the break poured some cold water on their hopes.

Zach Werenski is having another Norris-caliber season, and forwards like Kirill Marchenko, Dmitri Voronkov and Adam Fantilli provide some young upside to go with strong veteran contributions from Charlie Coyle, but there’s not much of note beyond those key core pieces.

Young goalie Jet Greaves and his .910 save percentage is surely the most intimidating thing about this team in a playoff matchup in terms of who could single-handedly steal a series for this team.

If Columbus gets in, it means they went on a run that would make them hot enough to be concerning, but this is as close as it would get for the Canes to what they’ve drawn in the past few years.

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