The Associated Press
RALEIGH — The Carolina Hurricanes look much like the team that won the Stanley Cup in 2006. Here’s the big question: Will they play like them, too?
The offseason was eventful for the Hurricanes, who brought back yet another player from the team that won the franchise’s only championship. Three years later, defenseman Aaron Ward is back in the fold and livening up a dressing room that includes the nucleus of that Cup team.
That’s one reason why the lasting anecdote from Carolina’s not-short-enough summer was the text message sent by forward Erik Cole to Ward: “We’re getting the band back together.”
With the season starting Friday night against Philadelphia, the challenge now is to make sure the songs still have harmony.
“He’s always wanted to come back here, so it’s nice to see,” captain Rod Brind’Amour said. “We know he’s a quality player, and I’m all about getting quality players in this room. He’s going to be a great fit.”
The Hurricanes apparently have decided that the best way to replicate their ’06 success is to bring back many of the players who got away in the years that followed that title. Cole and fellow forward Matt Cullen also returned to Raleigh at varying stages of the past few seasons, once the organization figured out that the best way to replace them was to reacquire them.
That means Carolina’s roster is now dominated by veterans and void of rookies.
“We don’t have any ... I don’t want to say, ’babies,’ out there, but we don’t have any of those,” Brind’Amour said. “Everyone knows what’s out there for us.”
The team’s youngest player — 24-year-old Eric Staal — is a two-time All-Star who already has his name on the Cup and has established himself as the face of the franchise.
“We like to think we have a good knowledge base of what our players are capable of,” coach Paul Maurice said.
They certainly were capable of plenty of surprises last spring.
After missing the playoffs in each of the two seasons that followed their Cup title, the Hurricanes sneaked in as the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference. They pulled off upsets of both No. 3 seed New Jersey and top-seeded Boston in consecutive Game 7s on the road to reach the East final, where they were swept by eventual Cup champion Pittsburgh.
“I think there’s something to build upon, but there’s still that bit that you want more,” Staal said. “I think it was, for everyone in the organization, it was exciting to be back in the playoffs. It felt like it had been forever since we were in the playoffs. Just the atmosphere around here, our building was unbelievable.”
n those types of games. We want that back, and we want to make sure that we start off on the right foot and make sure we have that fire to get all the way.”
For all the veterans in the lineup — 10 players are at least 30 years old — the team is built around Staal and young goaltender Cam Ward. Among the new pieces to complement them are defenseman Andrew Alberts, who spent last season in Philadelphia; and 35-year-old forward Stephane Yelle, who teamed with Aaron Ward in Boston.
Yet while the Hurricanes are optimistic about their offseason acquisitions, they know they weren’t the league’s only team to improve.
“There is nobody this year in the NHL saying, ’Boy, we got a lot worse this summer. I don’t like what we’re going to do,”’ Maurice said. “We feel like we’ve gotten better. The strength of our team last year and where we became a good team is, they really came together and they really became a competitive group among themselves and really handled the adversity when we got into (the playoffs).
“That’s going to have to happen again. The names mean nothing. Our challenge now is to come togheter, play the Hurricanes’ style of hockey as quickly as we possibly can and understand that it is an absolute dogfight because of the parity and the number of quality teams making the playoffs is very, very difficult.”
