NHL
NHL Playoffs
RALEIGH, N.C. — Sometimes it feels like the Carolina Hurricanes can’t win.
Well, proverbially, that is. We all know they can on the ice.
On Tuesday night, the Hurricanes will meet the Florida Panthers for their third Eastern Conference final in Rod Brind’Amour’s seven years behind the bench of the franchise he once captained to a Stanley Cup. They have won 10 playoff series and 46 games — fifth-most in the NHL during that span. In the regular season, they have won the third-most games (325) and amassed the fourth-most points (699) — eight behind the leading Boston Bruins — by playing a hardworking style under Brind’Amour that has proven to be a winning formula.
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Yet six years after the Canes were accused of having too much fun and dubbed by Don Cherry on “Coach’s Corner” as a “bunch of jerks” for their postgame “Storm Surge,” many in the hockey world are now calling them another dirty word: “boring.”
They’ve apparently gone from being too entertaining to … way too bland.
Never mind that after scoring the ninth-most goals per game in the regular season, they’ve scored more goals per game in these playoffs than the Maple Leafs and Dallas Stars. Never mind that they’re 8-2 in the postseason and look like a formidable Cup contender.
Well, naturally, just like six years ago when the old boys network was offended by the Canes’ method of celebrating victories, the Canes’ social media whizzes and their rabid fan base have latched onto the cynics calling their team “boring.”
After a five-game dispatch of the New Jersey Devils, the Hurricanes ended the season of the East’s best regular-season team, the Washington Capitals, also in five games. And then they reminded the naysayers just how dull they are by compiling some of those clips and jabs and compiling them into a humorous post of their own:
ECF berths are so boring! pic.twitter.com/6HNgWmjmY0
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) May 16, 2025
And just like those “bunch of jerks” T-shirts flew off the shelves in 2019 as the Canes advanced to the first conference final under Brind’Amour, red “Keep Carolina Hockey Boring” T-shirts are being sold online.
Inside the locker room where one of the last four remaining NHL teams was preparing for the third round of the playoffs Sunday, reaction to the “boring” accusations varied between giggles and eyerolls.
“You read it everywhere now and you’re like, ‘OK, we play a high-paced, puck pressure game with a lot of shots,” top-pair defenseman Jaccob Slavin said. “So if people find that boring, then I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a boring game. I think it’s hard to play against. I don’t think it’s boring, though. I think people are confusing boring with hard to play against.”
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First-line right wing Seth Jarvis smiled widely when asked if the Canes are boring.
“I feel if this was Toronto or a different team shutting teams down, they’d be getting praised out of this world,” Jarvis said. “But it’s just the way it is because we’re not Toronto, and we’re totally fine with it. We don’t think we’re boring at all.
“I mean, we create plenty of offense, maybe a little different than other teams. But scoring goals is scoring goals, and that’s something that we’ve gotten better at and started to do more consistently, especially in the playoffs now. I mean, I have a blast playing this style.”
There’s no doubt Brind’Amour demands a specific style of hockey that, in part, made him a winner and an arguably should-be Hall of Famer. If you really watch the Hurricanes play, sure, they are strict with their structure. But they don’t sit back. When they don’t have the puck, they pounce to get it back, then go hard on the forecheck and pepper opposing nets with pucks. After averaging the second-most shots per game in the regular season (31.7), they’re averaging the second-most in the playoffs (33.2) and are by far the league’s Corsi champs.
“Do you find that boring?” center Sebastian Aho said, chuckling. “We’re trying to win hockey games. That’s it. Our style is hard work. Every team works this time of year and they compete, there’s no question about that. But I think we’re willing to work our tails off for each other. Our base is hard work — to be the hardest-working team on the ice every night. But our goal is to hound the puck and wear down opponents offensively. It’s more fun to play in the offensive zone and have a chance to score goals, and that is how we play no matter what people may think.”
With that comes an attention to detail demanded by Brind’Amour that is “probably the biggest factor in everything we do.”
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“When we’re detailed, you see a game that’s hard to play against. That’s the trick,” he said.
Brind’Amour joked that he could sit down and “show you (the details all over the ice) … but I won’t.”
He just asks for total buy-in, and for the most part, he’s gotten it throughout his seven years as Carolina’s coach. As Jordan Martinook famously said in 2019, “I would run through hot coals for that guy.”
Brind’Amour says the “boring” criticism probably stems from the fact the Hurricanes “don’t have those sexy players yet” that maybe play with the pizzazz of superstars like Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews and Kirill Kaprizov.
“They’re coming,” Brind’Amour said, an indication that just because Mikko Rantanen didn’t want to move his life and career to the Tar Heel State doesn’t mean the Canes are done pursuing stars in the offseasons to come.
But still, Carolina believes it has plenty of offensive talent in the likes of Aho, Jarvis, Andrei Svechnikov, Logan Stankoven and others.
“The only way to score is with the puck, so we try to keep it as long as possible,” Jarvis said. “And whether that’s rimming the puck or chipping it out and using our speed that apparently some people don’t like, that’s the name of the game. But this organization’s done a great job at bringing people in that they know fit the mold and fit right in and be able to plug and play and not have a big drop-off or anything. I find the way we play a fun brand of hockey.”
Eric Tulsky, Carolina’s general manager, couldn’t care less about the criticism his team has taken from anonymous hockey fans on X or some in the media. Entertainment, to him, is winning, and the Canes do a lot of it.
“We want to win the Cup, and that’s what our fans want,” Tulsky told The Athletic. “So I don’t really care what people think of the way we play. But even setting that aside, I don’t believe the way we play is boring at all. I understand that criticism of teams that play a stifling defense by playing very passively and sitting back and just clogging things up and denying chances, but we play a stifling defense by being as aggressive as possible and getting on you at every turn and trying to make every single pass hard.
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“That’s what you want to see. You want to see that aggression. That’s the opposite of boring to me. It’s an all-out attack, so I don’t know where that narrative came from. I can’t imagine people that have really watched us play a lot of games have thought, ‘This is boring,’ but it’s a matter of personal taste.”
The Canes are averaging a league-best 1.8 goals-against per game this postseason, one goal fewer allowed than in the regular season. Freddie Andersen’s 12.2 goals saved above expected is the best in the playoffs and his 1.36 goals-against average through nine starts is the lowest since Ilya Bryzgalov’s 1.00 with Anaheim in 2006.
But believe it or not, Brind’Amour wants his team to score goals. Two years ago, when the Canes were swept by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference final and scored six times in the series, Brind’Amour was beside himself in the postgame presser. He was almost defiant, saying, “Everyone’s going to say you got swept, and that’s not what happened. I’m there. We’re in the game. We didn’t lose four games. We got beat but we were right there. This could have went the other way. It could have been four games the other way.”
The Canes lost Game 1 in four overtimes. They lost Game 2 in another overtime and put 38 shots on Sergei Bobrovsky. Game 3 was another 1-0 loss in which they only allowed 17 shots while Bobrovsky denied 32. And the Game 4 loss came when Matthew Tkachuk scored a tie-breaking, power-play goal with five seconds left.
Brind’amour hopes the stinging feeling after perhaps deserving better in the series will be a great learning lesson for his group this time around.
Defend well. Defend hard. And score enough goals to win, which is the name of the game and much more important than style points.
Eastern Conference finalists for the third time in seven years pic.twitter.com/PBp6PsuCYg
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) May 18, 2025
The Hurricanes had a lot of turnover heading into this season. Many wondered if their window was closed and they could even miss the playoffs. Then the trade for Rantanen didn’t work out and many felt at the deadline they again could be in trouble coming down the stretch and into the playoffs.
Yet, here they are again … eight wins from a Stanley Cup.
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“We’ve got a job to do,” Brind’Amour said. “I think from Day 1 of the year, we had this vision of where we want to go. And I think guys have (done) a real good job staying focused on not getting too far ahead. We know it’s still a long way to go. I mean, we’re halfway to that. It’s just understanding where we want to be but understanding how you got to get there.
“Every year is a great opportunity. I mean, we all understand how hard it is. Like, I don’t know that necessarily everyone out there does, but to get to this point is extremely hard to do. I think we all appreciate that. But also you’ve got to take advantage of that opportunity because you don’t know when they’re coming around (again). I think there’s a sense of urgency there on that.”
Which means, guess what? More attention to detail. More structure. And more hounding of the puck that makes the Hurricanes hard to play against and one tough out.
“The greatest thing about this team is whenever it’s time to work, we work,” Aho said.
Added Jarvis, “It’s special knowing that whoever we put on the ice, we have a chance to win. We all play the same way, which is the biggest part. We know what to expect out of each other. Now it’s just a matter of getting over this hump and taking the next steps to become a championship team.”
And if that means two more rounds of being called “boring,” well, so be it.
Nobody in Raleigh will be complaining of boredom if they’re hoisting that Stanley Cup for the second time in 19 years.
(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
Michael Russo is a senior writer covering the Minnesota Wild and the National Hockey League for The Athletic. He has covered the NHL since 1995 (Florida Panthers) and the Wild since 2005, previously for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Michael is a five-time Minnesota Sportswriter of the Year and in 2017 was named the inaugural Red Fisher Award winner as best beat writer in the NHL. Michael can be seen on NHL Network; and heard on KFAN (100.3 FM) and the Worst Seats in the House podcast (talknorth.com). He can be found on Instagram and X at @russohockey. Follow Michael on Twitter @RussoHockey
