Carolina Hurricanes Prospect Primer: College Edition
By Alex Ohari
The Carolina Hurricanes have an absolute wealth of prospects all over the world. There’s a multitude of them in Canadian junior to keep an eye on.
After previewing the Carolina Hurricanes’ prospects in Europe as well as their prospects in the Canadian junior leagues, today we head toward another developmental region; college hockey. The U.S. College ranks are an interesting case for young players. The Carolina Hurricanes have a lot of promise here.
Teams have 30 days after a player leaves college to sign the player, before that player becomes a free agent. If a player stays in college through his senior season, he becomes a UFA on August 15th after the season ends. Understood?
It’s a complicated process. But let me clear it up. Of the 10 players the Hurricanes have playing college hockey (6 forwards, 2 defenseman and 2 goaltenders) 5 of them – David Cotton, Matt Filipe, Max Zimmer, Luke Stevens and Luke Martin, are entering their senior seasons and will need to be signed to NHL entry-level contracts by August 15th of 2020 or the Hurricanes will lose them to free agency.
light. Trending. What should the Canes do with TVR?
In this article, I’ll do my best to outline each player’s individual progress, their long-term outlook with the Canes, and in some cases, what they need to do in order to even earn an entry-level deal.
Don Waddell and company will have 5 big decisions to make on their impending college FAs next summer, so I’ll try to give frequent updates throughout the season to summarize how those guys are progressing. Stay tuned.
The Hurricanes have had some mixed results with courting college players recently. Recently, they landed F Andrew Poturalski and G Rasmus Tirronen, neither of whom panned out. Jacob Pritchard is another one with potential, but he’s buried on the depth chart.
Then there’s the big names: after *almost guaranteeing the team would sign Adam Fox*, they obviously couldn’t, and traded him to New York. They then went out and landed the top college FA on the market August 15th – defenseman Chase Priskie.
Anyways, with the recent memory in the past, the Hurricanes have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to keep their own drafted guys in the fold. Starting off, let’s take a look at the six Hurricanes forwards in the college ranks.