Carolina Hurricanes Make Last Minute Changes to Roster

The Carolina Hurricanes have some additions to the roster

Right before departing to the Toronto Bubble, it appears as if the Carolina Hurricanes decided to make a few tweaks to their return to play roster.

As teams around the National Hockey League head to their respected host cities they had to submit their final 31 player rosters to the league. When the Carolina Hurricanes turned in theirs a few changes were made.

Right before Phase Three of the NHL’s Return to Play Plan began the Hurricanes released a 30 man roster, just one shy of the 31 limit. At the time it was a bit surprising to see both Roland McKeown and Clark Bishop left off.

Even with the wealth of depth on the blueline, McKeown seemed to be a no brainer pick. With teams allowed to carry extra skaters in case of injury, including a right shot NHL caliber D made a lot of sense. When you add the fact that he’s the captain of your AHL squad his omission was a bit surprising.

Joey Keane was a late addition to camp, leading many to believe that he was going to be added to the return to play roster, especially with Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce question marks. Now we have some clarity and it is in fact McKeown who will be joining the team not Keane.

At the same time, Clark Bishop was a guy who you know your coach trust and used in favor of more skilled guys in the past. Playing for the Canes in both the regular season and playoffs at times, you know what you’re going to get with him. A nice depth piece in the bottom six, his omission was also a bit surprising.

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Instead, Carolina invited 2019 first rounder Ryan Suzuki to training camp. What was a good experience for the young forward, it appears if he wont be traveling with the team to Toronto after all. In his place it’ll be the more veteran player Clark Bishop.

Looking at Brind’amour’s history it makes sense that he prefers to bring along the two guy who have a bit more experience under their belts. It is a bid odd however, that neither of them ever joined the group for Phase Three at any point.

It also looks as if Pesce is in fact among those named to the roster which is encouraging. They weren’t going to have him come along if there wasn’t a chance he could play at some point, even if it isn’t until after the play in round.

All in all the team is bring along 16 forwards (Aho, Bishop, Dzingel, Foegele, Geekie, Lorentz, Martinook, McCormick, McGinn, Necas, Niederreiter, Staal, Svechnikov, Teravainen, Trocheck and Williams), 11 defenseman (Bean, Edmundson, Fleury, Gardiner, Hamilton, McKeown, Pesce, Skjei, Slavin, van Riemsdyk, and Vatanen) and four goalies (Forsberg, Mrazek, Nedeljkovic, and Reimer) to the bubble.

Question for CC readers: What do you think of these few roster changes?