Well, they did it. In the last notebook of the 2025/2026 season, we looked at the Carolina Hurricanes as they were in the midst of the Stanley Cup Final. A few days later, they defeated the Vegas Golden Knights and hoisted the Stanley Cup. Now the question is: can they do it again?
With most of their championship roster already under contract for at least one more season, it’s been a quiet offseason for the Hurricanes. A parade day announcement of a two year extension for Nic Deslauriers means GM Eric Tulsky will bring back the same skater group for a crack at a repeat this season. The only notable change to the roster from the 2026 Cup winning group is the departure of goaltender Frederik Andersen.
Removing Andersen’s expiring contract from the books means the Hurricanes will likely run with a Brandon Bussi/Pyotr Kochetkov tandem this season, who have both had strong runs over the past two seasons filling in for an oft injured Andersen. It also sees the Canes walk away from a 36 year old goaltender who is reaching an age where the retirement cliff is approaching rapidly. In the last Hurricanes Notebook, we postulated that Tulsky could look to move a veteran to achieve some roster regeneration this summer. While Anderson’s departure doesn’t do that entirely, it does see Carolina choose not to lock in again and it leaves them a sizable amount of cap space to work with into the season.
Choosing to run it back with a Stanley Cup winning roster is logic that is hard to find fault with. As we noted previously, the Hurricanes roster is a yin and yang group of veterans and younger players which is different than other recent cup winners. While we can expect some natural decline from the older group, it’s also reasonable to expect the younger group can take up the slack next season.
Not only are the Hurricanes poised to take their shot at a repeat with almost entirely the same group that won them the Cup in June, Tulsky has positioned the team with cap space this season and the prospect pipeline is reasonably stocked. That may come in handy as the trade deadline nears. Draft capital is never a bad thing to have and the Hurricanes have it in spades for defending Stanley Cup champion.
More often than not, cup winners have been contending for a while and have been utilizing draft capital to augment their roster at deadline time. The Hurricanes haven’t been idle, but they’ve managed to keep their pipeline near baseline strength thanks, in large part, to a big swing they took a year prior. Mikko Rantanen spent about a month as a Hurricane after the trade from Colorado that sent shock waves through the league in early 2025. Yet, after a failed attempt to sign the star forward to an extension, the Hurricanes pivoted and sent him to the Dallas Stars for a largely futures based package.
A year and a half after the initial Rantanen trade, it’s clear that the Hurricanes made out like bandits after their failed attempt to extend Rantanen. The Jackson Blake/Logan Stankoven/Taylor Hall line that was a key factor in their Cup winning playoff run was born out of those two transactions. Blake was a Hurricanes draft pick in 2021 but the other two members of the line came from the two Rantanen deals. Taylor Hall was a throw from the Chicago Blackhawks within the three team deal with the Avalanche that brought Rantanen to Carolina, while Logan Stankoven arrived in the deal that sent Rantanen to the Stars. Yet that isn’t the end of the tree. The Hurricanes also used one of the first round picks acquired from Dallas to add K’Andre Miller in the summer of 2025 to solidify their D-corps.
The Hurricanes have cued up their repeat attempt with almost entirely the same roster that brought them their first Stanley Cup in 20 years. While the roster construction process was a deviation from what we’ve seen from other recent cup winners, it brought them a Stanley Cup right on schedule by the contention timeline. Now the question is: who can dethrone them?
