Carolina Hurricanes: Five Lessons Learned Last Postseason

Playoff Canes are for Real

The Carolina Hurricanes are a different beast in the playoffs.

Lastly, the Carolina Hurricanes yet again proved that they are a different animal when they make the post season. Although it hasn’t been often, historically, when they qualify for the playoffs they tend to do some damage.

Since the introduction of the Salary Cap Era, the Canes have always made it to at least the Conference Finals every year they’ve qualified. Established back in the 05-06 season, Carolina was the first team to win a cup under the league’s new rules.

In the 08-09 season they returned to the postseason only to get swept by the eventual cup winners, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Last season they obviously made their long awaited return to the post season, ironically, also getting swept, this time around by the Boston Bruins.

While the organization as a whole has historically had success, there are also a few individual players that have shown to elevate their level of play in the postseason. Justin Williams is the first to come to mind. Developing his reputation as Mr. Game 7 for being a player you can count on in elimination game, he is the NHL’s all time leader in points in Game 7s.

From one captain to another, Jordan Staal has also been a guy who historically performs at a much higher level in the playoffs. It doesn’t matter if it’s scoring more, hitting more, or consitenetly being able to shut down opposing team’s top players, he seems to turn into a different player when the intensity heats up.

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Although in a short sample size, Warren Foegele and Jaccob Slavin both appeared to be guys who have the ability to elevate their play in the postseason. Foegele burst on the scene with 9 points in 15 games, almost matching his point total of 15 in 77 regular season games. Slavin, who had only 23 NHL goals over 309 games, broke out for 11 in just 15 games in the playoffs.

At the end of the day each year is a different challenge. Given how much time has passed since the last regular season games were played who knows how things will play out this time around. While some fans are calling for an asterisk to be placed over this years’ cup winner, the player seem to think that it’ll be more even more difficult to sit up top the NHL this season.

This season the Carolina Hurricanes’ young players enter the playoff with a bit of experience. A lot of the guys on this team know what it takes to get it done and hopefully they can use that to their advantage.

They of course have to defeat the New York Rangers in best of five series before they even qualify for the postseason. If they do manage to come out on top, I wouldn’t bet against this Hurricanes team and expect them to do some damage in the postseason yet again.

Question for CC readers: With the roster seeing a fair amount of changes from last season till now, do you think this could be the year the Hurricanes finally begin to emerge as serious Stanley Cup Contenders?