Carolina Hurricanes to Face Most Important Offseason in Years

Notable UFA’s to Re-Sign

Let’s dive into this.

The Carolina Hurricanes have about $30 million in cap space heading into the offseason ($29,426,417 to be exact). I’m going to be operating under a couple assumptions here, so bear with me.

The first assumption? The Carolina Hurricanes lose Jake Bean to the Seattle Kraken in the upcoming Expansion Draft. This doesn’t change their projected cap space this summer by much, if at all. The next assumption is that the Carolina Hurricanes do not extend a qualifying offer to controversial goaltending prospect Jeremy Helvig, thereby releasing him to free agency.

These assumptions out of the way, let’s look at which players the Carolina Hurricanes have that are about to hit either unrestricted free agency. The list is as follows: Dougie Hamilton, Jordan Martinook, Cedric Paquette, Brock McGinn, Jani Hakanpaa, Petr Mrazek, James Reimer, Max McCormick, Sheldon Rempal, David Gust, Roland McKeown, and Antoine Bibeau.

Right off the bat, there should be a few names that stick out. We’ve already covered just how irreplaceable Dougie Hamilton is, but aside from him, the Carolina Hurricanes should absolutely re-sign Brock McGinn, and at least one of Petr Mrazek or James Reimer.

Without going on too much of a tangent on goaltending, the Canes seem to have fully committed to a 1A/1B system, even with the meteoric rise of Alex Nedeljkovic; Mrazek and/or Reimer would have to be comfortable being firmly in the 1B slot behind Ned, especially if he continues providing the Carolina Hurricanes with the best goaltending they’ve received in well over a decade.

Guys like Martinook, Paquette, Hakanpaa, McCormick, Rempal, Gust, McKeown, and Bibeau are likely on the way out or, at the very least, going to accept either a two-way deal, a league minimum deal, or just re-sign to remain in the AHL barring any miraculous steps forward in production.

After all is said and done, Dougie should easily command close to $8M AAV on a 4-6 year deal (he could easily get that dollar amount and longer term elsewhere, but it has been reported that he could likely circle back to Carolina), and Brock is definitely due for a pay raise.

In my opinion, put BCB in at $3M AAV and let him do what he does: kill penalties and embody everything it means to be a “Rod Brind’amour“-style player. These two re-signings would leave the Canes with roughly $19M in cap space with a few key pieces left to sign. We’ll talk about those guys in a minute.

The Carolina Hurricanes actively take a step back if they fail to re-sign Dougie Hamilton or Brock McGinn. The jury is still out a bit as far as goaltending goes, since there are a few names out there that would be an upgrade over Mrazek or Reimer as a backup to Nedeljkovic, so I’ll reserve judgment on that front for now. On to the RFA’s.