A Not-So-Brief Look at Carolina Hurricanes’ Upcoming Contract Extensions

Take a seat, sit back, grab a glass of water and put on your reading glasses; this one is a bit of a doozy. The Carolina Hurricanes are going to have to wade through a veritable sea of contract negotiations in the coming months. In an era where the salary cap staying flat is the best case scenario for the next year or two, this could spell trouble, but I don’t entirely think it’ll be all that difficult for Waddell and Co. to handle. Let me explain.

For starters, the Carolina Hurricanes (if no moves are made this season) will have 23 players in total whose contracts will expire at the end of the 2020-21 NHL Regular Season. This number seems daunting at first, but it gets a bit better when you consider 12 of those 23 are Restricted Free Agents (RFAs) upon expiry.

This includes Warren Foegele, Alex Nedeljkovic, Spencer Smallman, Roland McKeown, and Sheldon Rempal, all of whom will have salary arbitration rights upon expiry.

The other RFAs will be Andrei Svechnikov, Morgan Geekie, Jake Bean, Jeremy Bracco, Jason Cotton, Maxime Lajoie, and Jeremy Helvig. Of this group, Svech is sure to command the highest dollar amount, but this won’t be a huge a problem. More on that point later, let’s look at the remaining players whose contracts will expire into Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) status.

The UFAs for the Carolina Hurricanes this offseason will be Ryan Dzingel, Dougie Hamilton, Jordan Martinook, Brock McGinn, James Reimer, Petr Mrazek, Joakim Ryan, Antoine Bibeau, David Gust, Drew Shore, and Max McCormick.

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Obviously, getting Dougie an extension should be the #1 priority of this group; as for the others, I’d honestly wait and see how this season unfolds for them before fully committing to re-signing them.

If I’m being really honest at this point in the season, I don’t see Max McCormick, Joakim Ryan, David Gust, Drew Shore, or the other AHLer’s above getting a significant extension or playing much outside of the AHL. Who knows, though, this season could completely change my mind. We’ll see.

Now that we’ve got whose contracts are expiring into what status out of the way, let’s look at the Carolina Hurricanes’ projected cap space for the 2021-22 season. As of the writing of this article, the Carolina Hurricanes are projected to have $28,126,417 in cap space for the 2021-22 season, according to our friends at capfriendly.com.

Alexander Semin‘s buyout money ($2,333,333) will finally be off the Carolina Hurricanes’ books, which will be a huge help in extending the projected two big fish this offseason in Andrei Svechnikov and Dougie Hamilton.

Now, a bit of a caveat: the Carolina Hurricanes will be losing at least one player to the Seattle Kraken in the upcoming Expansion Draft; I’m going to be operating under the assumption that it will be Jake Bean, so as to simplify the money math; losing Bean would mean no money saved from or added to the Canes’ cap space. If you’d like more info on the Seattle Expansion Draft, I wrote about it and what it might mean for the Carolina Hurricanes a few weeks ago.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dive in to what these contract extensions might look like for some of the bigger names, starting with Doogie and Mistah Svechnikov.

What About the Goalies?

It is no secret that the Carolina Hurricanes need an upgrade in net; the current 1B/1C tandem seems to be working at the moment, but to really become a threat at winning a Stanley Cup, signing a true elite 1A goaltender is almost a given.

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For this reason, I believe the Carolina Hurricanes walk from both Petr Mrazek and James Reimer, and pursue a bona fide starter in the Free Agency period this offseason. I might be writing about this soon. *hint, hint*

I’m also not entirely sold on the idea of them re-signing Alex Nedeljkovic, either; the 2018-19 AHL Goalie of the Year was recently waived to join the Carolina Hurricanes’ taxi squad and is seemingly on the outs in the organization, so I’m not entirely sure where to rank him.

We’ll say his status is TBD for the time being; my next update of this situation will likely come closer to the trade deadline, or even a few days after to evaluate what moves have been made, if any.

The Rest of the Group

The AHLer’s in this group of upcoming UFAs and RFAs, in my opinion, are Jeremy Bracco, Joakim Ryan, Roland McKeown, Sheldon Rempal, Spencer Smallman, David Gust, Jason Cotton, Drew Shore, Antoine Bibeau, Maxime Lajoie, Jeremy Helvig, and Max McCormick. None of these guys should get much more than your basic two-way deal, worth roughly $800,000 AAV in the NHL each (give or take a couple hundred thousand). I’ll say the Canes set aside $4M to get these deals done, since most of them aren’t pivotal to the roster at this point in time.

This brings our total cap space to $11,126,417, with Brock McGinn, Warren Foegele, Ryan Dzingel, Morgan Geekie, and Jordan Martinook left to be re-signed. This, to me, is another tough part. The Carolina Hurricanes, with the addition of Jesper Fast this past offseason, have created a bit of a redundancy in their programming, at least in terms of what kinds of players they have on the roster.

Martinook is the true definition of a heart-and-soul player, and is easily one of the best glue guys in the league. McGinn is an incredibly solid penalty-killer, and has hustle like nobody’s business. Foegele and Geekie could both very well be budding stars in their own right.

If the Canes re-sign any of these guys, it’ll have to be at $2M or less, considering Fast’s market-setting salary for middle-6 to bottom-6 talent. Let’s assume they re-sign 2 of the 4 at $2M each. (I’m not even gonna say which just because that decision is worth an entire article in and of itself.) This brings us to $7,126,417, and really only one player left to re-sign.

Ryan Dzingel, Man of Mystery

The final player to look at is Ryan Dzingel, and I’ll be honest with you guys. I have absolutely no idea what the Carolina Hurricanes’ plan for Dzingel is going forward. I personally was incredibly hyped when they signed him prior to the 2019-20 season, but his offensive production just wasn’t anywhere near close to what we had seen when he was in Ottawa or Columbus.

Dzingel is the one player out of this group that has me stymied, but I’d imagine that they let him explore the market, while keeping that $7.1M open themselves for other options that might arise in this year’s Free Agency period.

So, there you have it, Caniacs. A very early, not-so-brief look at the upcoming contract negotiations the Carolina Hurricanes are set to have this season and heading into the offseason. I know this information is a lot to digest, but the “too long; didn’t read” is essentially this: the Carolina Hurricanes have a daunting challenge in re-signing and extending some very key players in the coming months, but it isn’t doom-and-gloom by any means.

Suffice it to say, though, that I am eternally grateful that I’m not the one in the dealmaker’s chair. I think you’d have to have at least 4 turtlenecks to sit in Donnie Franchise’s chair, anyways.

Question for CC Readers: Who are you hoping the Carolina Hurricanes extend first: Dougie or Svech?