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Carolina Hurricanes
2026-27 season preview

Carolina Hurricanes

43-31-1096 pts10th of 32
Goals for
3.15
2nd in the league
Goals against
2.94
5th in the league
Power play
24.9%
4th in the league

Kodo projects the Carolina Hurricanes for 43-31-10 (96 pts), carried by 2nd-ranked offense. In a categories league, the fantasy value runs through Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho on PP1. 3 core skaters project to rise and 4 to slip. Brandon Bussi is the projected starter.

Your categories · using the preset above
Breakout watch
projects 51.1 pts on a rising role (L2·PP1)
Buy-low
underlying shot/chance rates outran the results — a discount vs name value
The crease
Brandon Bussi
Brandon Bussi projects the crease (~55 starts)
Contents · 12 sections

Latest

lines, injuries and roster moves 1 / 12
TransactionAlexander Nikishin off CAR roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionDominik Badinka added to CAR roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionNoel Fransén added to CAR roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionWilliam Hakansson added to CAR roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionBryce Montgomery added to CAR roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
Each item names its source. Kodo's own projected line changes are not reported here.
Carried into camp
Eric RobinsonProbable for start of season — Knee · CBS2026-06-26 · 56d
Reported more than 30 days ago, so listed as a standing condition rather than news. The date is the one the injury feed carries, which is the game the player was expected to miss — not the day anything was last checked.

Where this team sits

last season vs projection 2 / 12
25-2626-27Change
Goals for3.552nd3.1513th-0.40▼11
Goals against2.886th2.947th+0.06▼1
Power play24.94th20.7415th-4.16▼11
Penalty kill80.511th81.362nd+0.86▲9
Faceoffs50.116th50.629th+0.52▲7
Points percentage0.6892nd0.57110th-0.118▼8
How these projections are made
Both bars share one scale per row — the wider of the two league ranges — so a bar that moves is a number that moved. The grey tick is that column's league average, and the arrow is the change in league rank. Goals-against and expected-goals-against rank ascending, so low is good and green always means improved.
Goals for, goals against and points percentage come from the roster: summed player projections over the real 26-27 schedule, last season's expected goals against regressed toward the league and adjusted for projected goaltending, and a game-by-game simulation of that schedule.
The special teams are projected from how much each number actually carries over year to year, measured across 298 team-season pairs going back to 2010-11. The power play uses one prior season shrunk 0.36; the penalty kill uses three, weighted .5/.3/.2 and shrunk 0.38. Special teams barely persist, so a league-worst penalty kill is mostly bad luck and comes most of the way back, while the faceoff dot is a repeatable team skill. How far a club moves depends on how far from the mean it started: Vancouver sits near league average on both the power play and the faceoff dot and barely shifts, while Edmonton's 30.6% power play comes back to the middle and this penalty kill, worst in the league, is the biggest riser of all 32.
The penalty kill averages three seasons because one measures it so badly. Split a single season's spread into ability and sampling noise — a kill rate is a binomial over about 250 opportunities, so the noise is known rather than guessed — and only 33% of the gap between clubs is real. Divide the year-over-year correlation by that and the ability underneath comes out near 1.0: penalty killing is almost perfectly persistent and merely hard to see in one season. The cure for a noisy measurement is more of it, and three seasons beat one by 4.3% out of sample. Because averaging reorders clubs, that row's rank is a real forecast; the rows marked = are single-season regressions, which compress the values but keep them in order, so their rank is last season's by construction and only the value is a prediction.
A roster-aware faceoff model was built and rejected on the evidence. Draw counts are not stored, but they can be recovered exactly from the per-game percentages, and with real draws a club's number reconstructs from its own centres. It still does not predict better: given a club's first half to learn from and even handed the second half's draw distribution, it scored 2.24 against the plain regression's 2.26 across 32 clubs, and the best blend of the two puts almost no weight on it. A team's faceoff percentage already carries who takes its draws. Expected goals has no team projection at all, so that row shows last season alone.

How last season went

in quarters — where the season was won and lost 3 / 12
They held about the same pace all year+2 points of win percentage between the first quarter and the last.
Oct–Nov10-0911-19
65%13-7
for3.65
against2.90
Nov–Jan11-2101-03
52%11-10
for3.10
against3.29
Jan–Mar01-0403-04
75%15-5
for3.80
against2.40
Mar–Apr03-0604-14
67%14-7
for3.90
against3.10
Why the shape matters more than the total
Every rate on the board above is a season average, and an average cannot tell a club that was good all year from one that was excellent for six weeks and ordinary after. Those are different teams to draft into: the second one probably changed — an injury, a call-up, a coach — and whatever changed is likelier to still be true in October than the average is.
Read it against the roster movement section. A club that faded and then lost its best defenceman is not going to bounce; one that faded while carrying injuries and got everybody back is a different case entirely.
Quarters are equal shares of the games actually played, so the windows differ slightly by club depending on scheduling.

Schedule shape

games per week and per month, light nights, back-to-backs 4 / 12
Light nights
26.2%23rd
22 of 84 games
Four-game weeks
717th
4 weeks of two or fewer
Back-to-backs
1217th
roughly one backup start each
Playoff-week games
1017th
over 3 weeks · 2 back-to-back
Games per week
2026-09-28on light nights2027-04-05
Games by month
Sep*
1
Oct
14
Nov
12
Dec
13
Jan
14
Feb
10
Mar
15
Apr*
5
* part of a month — the season opens and closes mid-month.
Why these three and not a schedule score
They answer different formats, so combining them would hide the answer rather than give it. Four-game weeks decide weekly-lineup leagues: the same player produces a third more in a four-game week than a three-game one, and clubs differ by several such weeks across a season. Light nights decide daily leagues and streaming — a light night is one carrying no more than the league's median number of games (6 this season), so your man is a far larger share of everything available than he is on a sixteen-game Tuesday. Playoff-week games counts the last three weeks of the season excluding the final one — most head-to-head leagues have crowned a champion before the NHL finishes, and that last week is short and full of rested stars. Back-to-backs decide the crease, because a starter rarely takes both ends, so each one is roughly a start handed to the backup.
Ranks are against all 32 clubs, and the whole thing is read off the published slate — no projection is involved.

Projected lineup

lines, pairs and both special teams, with what each man projects for 5 / 12
Lineup notes
This is the lineup the club can ice on opening night, not its best-case group. A player expected to miss more than the opening month is left out and his slot goes to whoever takes it — he keeps his projection below, he is out of the lineup, not out of the season.
Seth JarvisShoulder: Expected to be out until at least Dec 26 · still projected 37 games
Projected ice time totals 298.1 of the 300 skater-minutes a game has. Power play 3.16′ on the first unit, 1.79′ on the second; the kill 2.35′, 1.67′ and 1′ across three units — all measured.Change this lineup →

Forward lines

L1
LW
Nikolaj EhlersG: 87th percentileA: 92nd percentilePPP: 94th percentileSOG: 91st percentileHIT: 11th percentileBLK: 21st percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
66 pts · 18.0′
23G · 43A · 185SOG · 26HIT · 26BLK
C
Sebastian AhoG: 94th percentileA: 96th percentilePPP: 95th percentileSOG: 93rd percentileHIT: 44th percentileBLK: 15th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
83 pts · 19.6′
30G · 53A · 198SOG · 61HIT · 25BLK
RW
Andrei SvechnikovG: 92nd percentileA: 88th percentilePPP: 95th percentileSOG: 91st percentileHIT: 90th percentileBLK: 5th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
66 pts · 18.0′
28G · 38A · 191SOG · 147HIT · 19BLK
L2
LW
Taylor HallG: 73rd percentileA: 71st percentilePPP: 68th percentileSOG: 63rd percentileHIT: 27th percentileBLK: 26th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
39 pts · 15.2′
15G · 23A · 113SOG · 43HIT · 29BLK
C
Logan StankovenG: 82nd percentileA: 73rd percentilePPP: 74th percentileSOG: 87th percentileHIT: 32nd percentileBLK: 19th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
45 pts · 15.2′
20G · 24A · 171SOG · 49HIT · 26BLK
RW
Jackson BlakeG: 86th percentileA: 79th percentilePPP: 76th percentileSOG: 84th percentileHIT: 3rd percentileBLK: 31st percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
51 pts · 16.6′
23G · 28A · 161SOG · 15HIT · 31BLK
L3
LW
William CarrierG: 44th percentileA: 31st percentilePPP: 6th percentileSOG: 42nd percentileHIT: 95th percentileBLK: 6th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
15 pts · 12.2′
6G · 8A · 77SOG · 177HIT · 19BLK
C
Jordan StaalG: 67th percentileA: 49th percentilePPP: 50th percentileSOG: 50th percentileHIT: 87th percentileBLK: 45th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
27 pts · 16.3′
13G · 14A · 87SOG · 133HIT · 39BLK
RW
Jordan MartinookG: 63rd percentileA: 52nd percentilePPP: 6th percentileSOG: 57th percentileHIT: 69th percentileBLK: 52nd percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
27 pts · 14.6′
11G · 15A · 98SOG · 91HIT · 44BLK
L4
LW
Jesperi KotkaniemiG: 40th percentileA: 39th percentilePPP: 35th percentileSOG: 37th percentileHIT: 52nd percentileBLK: 13th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
16 pts · 11.7′
6G · 11A · 72SOG · 68HIT · 23BLK
C
Mark JankowskiG: 57th percentileA: 28th percentilePPP: 42nd percentileSOG: 28th percentileHIT: 24th percentileBLK: 47th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
17 pts · 11.7′
10G · 8A · 63SOG · 40HIT · 41BLK
RW
Eric RobinsonG: 56th percentileA: 28th percentilePPP: 6th percentileSOG: 45th percentileHIT: 72nd percentileBLK: 2nd percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
17 pts · 12.4′
9G · 8A · 82SOG · 96HIT · 15BLK

Defence pairs

D1
LD
Sean WalkerG: 48th percentileA: 55th percentilePPP: 34th percentileSOG: 81st percentileHIT: 82nd percentileBLK: 91st percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
24 pts · 20.1′
7G · 17A · 152SOG · 121HIT · 113BLK
RD
K'Andre MillerG: 51st percentileA: 79th percentilePPP: 54th percentileSOG: 67th percentileHIT: 80th percentileBLK: 85th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
36 pts · 21.9′
8G · 28A · 121SOG · 115HIT · 97BLK
D2
LD
Jaccob SlavinG: 30th percentileA: 50th percentilePPP: 6th percentileSOG: 61st percentileHIT: 6th percentileBLK: 89th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
18 pts · 19.2′
4G · 15A · 107SOG · 20HIT · 108BLK
RD
Jalen ChatfieldG: 31st percentileA: 42nd percentilePPP: 17th percentileSOG: 58th percentileHIT: 31st percentileBLK: 72nd percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
15 pts · 19.2′
4G · 12A · 100SOG · 48HIT · 68BLK
D3
LD
Shayne GostisbehereG: 64th percentileA: 92nd percentilePPP: 93rd percentileSOG: 74th percentileHIT: 21st percentileBLK: 76th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
56 pts · 19.0′
12G · 44A · 131SOG · 37HIT · 76BLK
RD
Alexander NikishinG: 56th percentileA: 70th percentilePPP: 72nd percentileSOG: 68th percentileHIT: 85th percentileBLK: 86th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
32 pts · 17.6′
9G · 23A · 123SOG · 130HIT · 98BLK

Special teams

Scratches & depth

Roster movement & minutes

who changed, and the minutes freed 6 / 12
In Badinka, Fransén, Hakansson, Montgomery, Välimäki, Khazheyev, Nystrom, Sawchenko, Seeley, Jaaska, Neuchev, Ryabkin
Callup Nadeau, Sardarian, Cerrato, Montgomery, Seeley, Jaaska
Out Reilly, Andersen, Carlson, Fensore→COL
Hall14.515.6 +1.1
Carrier10.811.8 +1
Ehlers16.617.6 +1
Stankoven15.516.4 +0.9
Slavin21.321 -0.3
Walker21.821.4 -0.4
Gostisbehere19.218.7 -0.5
Staal16.215.4 -0.8
Biggest projected minute changes either way — a club's ice time is a fixed budget, so the departures above are what free it up. Full board →

Camp battles

contested roles, priced in points 7 / 12
Top power-play unit — forward slot9.4 pts at stake
holds it
Jackson Blake
51 proj pts · 16.5′ · 2.4′ PP
vs
pushing
Logan Stankoven
45 proj pts · 16.4′ · 1.9′ PP
Jackson Blaketoo close to callLogan Stankoven
1.40 more min/game on PP1 (measured PP1 vs PP2 minutes), at the challenger's own scoring rate over a full season. Power-play gaps come from measured PP minutes last season; even-strength gaps from the role model that drives every projection on this page.
Top power-play unit — quarterback10.1 pts at stake
holds it
Shayne Gostisbehere
56 proj pts · 18.7′ · 3.2′ PP
vs
pushing
Alexander Nikishin
32 proj pts · 18.1′ · 1.2′ PP
Shayne Gostisbeheremodel favours the incumbentAlexander Nikishin

Power play

24.9% last season · who it runs through, and what is left of it 8 / 12
Conversion
24.9%
on the man advantage
PP goals
58
534 shots
Expected goals
50.8
+7.2 vs actual
Shooting
10.9%
of PP shots go in
Who it runs through · last season
PlayerPP/gmSharePPGPPAPPP/60ixGIPPFocal
Svechnikov2.9952%1217297.368.358%1.47
Ehlers2.9150%1019297.294.261%1.46
Aho3.1555%720276.526.354%1.3
Gostisbehere3.1254%612186.293.862%1.25
Jarvis3.1154%516215.76.651%1.14
Nikishin1.5627%46104.741.943%0.95
Blake2.3541%39123.785.256%0.75
Stankoven1.831%4593.694.859%0.74
Staal0.9316%4043.44347%0.68
Hall1.8933%3472.784.553%0.55
What IPP, focal and ixG mean
IPP is the share of the power-play goals he was on the ice for that he got a point on. It is the direct form of “the play runs through him”: two men can take the same unit minutes while one touches the puck on every goal and the other watches from the far circle. League average on the power play is 59%. It is computed from the on-ice record of every goal, corrected for the ~18% of goals with no on-ice row and shrunk toward the positional mean for thin samples, so it cannot exceed 1.
Focal is the older, cruder version — his share of the team's power-play points over his share of its minutes. It is team-relative, so it moves when a teammate is injured; IPP does not. ixG is the expected goals from his own shots on the man advantage. Minutes are measured, not modelled.
Projected PP1Aho27 PPP (27 last yr)Ehlers25 PPP (29 last yr)Svechnikov27 PPP (29 last yr)Blake11 PPP (12 last yr)Gostisbehere24 PPP (18 last yr)
Projected PP2Hall6 PPP (7 last yr)Stankoven9 PPP (9 last yr)Nikishin8 PPP (10 last yr)Miller3 PPP (3 last yr)Staal2 PPP (4 last yr)

Hits, blocks and the rest

what a banger league is won with 9 / 12
Hits
190225th
projected, this roster · of 32
Blocks
118431st
projected, this roster · of 32
Shots
268010th
projected, this roster · of 32
Penalty minutes
70626th
projected, this roster · of 32
Faceoff wins
226715th
projected, this roster · of 32
H+B
308628th
projected, this roster · of 32
S+H+B
576625th
projected, this roster · of 32
Who supplies them
PlayerGPHits/60Blks/60PKPIMFOW+/-H+BS+H+B
Walker D1801214.791134.252.153+2234386
Nikishin D3·PP2811305.37983.831.536+7228351
Miller D1·PP2781153.76972.942.050+5212333
Svechnikov L1·PP1751476.61190.716370165356
Carrier L36817713.65191.430.1207+4196273
Staal L3·PP2661338.2392.372.223705+5172259
Deslauriers3813127.55111.820.1422-5142166
Martinook L373915.9442.632.22932+6135233
Välimäki70498626-2135202
Gostisbehere D3·PP172371.65763.580.233+6113244
Chatfield D277481.49682.612.329+13116215
Slavin D273200.431083.93.08+13128234
Aho L1·PP179612.44250.891.745611+1086284
Robinson L468967.07151.021.1103+5111193
Kotkaniemi L458687.89232.260.323225+491163
Hall L2·PP270432.74291.550.13623+172185
Jankowski L467403.55413.551.221319+581144
Stankoven L2·PP276492.39261.050.123299+574245
Blake L2·PP174150.58311.530.2344+347208
Jarvis37443.62181.211.71124+462177
Nystrom48161.04422.291.515+258114
Nadeau31448.08171.920.19061111
What actually moves these numbers
Penalty-kill time is the strongest driver of blocks we can measure. Across 1,504 consecutive season pairs, a skater who gains a minute of shorthanded time a game adds a median 9.5 blocks over 84 games — a defenceman 16 — and the effect runs monotonically the other way too: lose a minute and it is −15.6, or −25.9 for a defenceman. The PK column is here for that reason.
But it is mostly the minutes, not the man. Shorthanded time correlates +0.52 with blocks per 60 across players and only +0.14 within the same player year to year, which says coaches pick shot-blockers for the kill more than the kill turns anyone into one. A player promoted onto PK1 gains blocks because he is on the ice for more shots, not because he changed — so price the ice time, not a breakout.
Hits run opposite to ice time. Total minutes correlate −0.57 with hits per 60, and −0.60 among forwards: the fourth line hits, the first line does not. So a rate beats a total here more than in any other category, which is what the /60 columns are for — a checker on eleven minutes at 12 hits per 60 is worth more than a first-liner at 5 on nineteen, and their season totals can look identical.
Power-play time predicts the absence of all of it — −0.43 with hits per 60, −0.47 with blocks, −0.26 with penalty minutes. The men who run a power play are not the men who supply a banger roster, which is why the two sections of this page rarely name anybody twice.
Faceoff wins are a volume category. They track draws taken far more than win rate, so the man to want is the one taking the most — normally the first-line centre and whoever takes defensive-zone draws on the kill.
Measured on 2022-23 through 2025-26, skaters with 40+ games and 200+ minutes at both ends of each pair.

Contracts and the cap

what the roster costs, and who reaches the market 10 / 12
$85.6Mcommitted · 23 of 25 on file
7reach the market after this season

Pending free agents · this summer

Shayne GostisbehereDUFA$3.20M56 pts
Jordan MartinookLUFA$3.08M26 pts
Jalen ChatfieldDUFA$3.02M15 pts
Jordan StaalCUFA$2.92M27 pts
Pyotr KochetkovGUFA$2.00M
Bradly NadeauLRFA$0.92M14 pts
Alexander NikishinDRFA32 pts

Free the summer after

Taylor HallL$3.17M39 pts
Mark JankowskiC$1.85M17 pts
Charlie CerratoC$0.92M9 pts
Felix Unger SorumR$0.90M7 pts
Nicolas DeslauriersL$0.88M1 pts

Biggest cap hits

Nikolaj EhlersL$8.50M4y left · NMC
Andrei SvechnikovR$7.75M2y left · M-NTC
K'Andre MillerD$7.50M6y left
Seth JarvisR$7.42M5y left
Jaccob SlavinD$6.40M6y left
Logan StankovenC$6.00M7y left
Jackson BlakeR$5.12M7y left
Jesperi KotkaniemiC$4.82M3y left · M-NTC

Cap hits from CapWages for the 23 men on file. A dash is a figure we do not have, usually a restricted free agent whose entry-level deal has lapsed, and those are left out of the committed total rather than counted as nothing.

The crease

GSAx last season, projected next 11 / 12
GSAx view
Bussi
39 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.658
lg -0.858172th
Shot quality faced
0.0782
lg 0.073191th hardest
1.60-1.113875
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-75 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
55 GS29 W (1328)0.902 SV%2.37 GAA
Kochetkov
8 starts last season
GSAx / start
Shot quality faced
0.077
lg 0.073187th hardest
1.60-1.11714
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-14 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
29 GS14 W (716)0.903 SV%2.51 GAA
GSAx is goals saved above expected — what the shots he faced were worth, minus what he actually allowed. Shown per start, because a backup cannot out-accumulate a starter but can out-perform him on a per-night basis. Shot quality faced is expected goals per shot: higher means he was hung out to dry more often, and the percentile is where that workload ranks among goalies with 15+ starts. Rolling form is a 10-start moving average — is he playing well lately; running total is the season's accumulated damage. Per-game GSAx is too noisy to read either from directly.

Every skater

the reference table · Overall is value as a z-score against the league, so +1.00 is a standard deviation above average 12 / 12
Forwards · 22
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Andrei SvechnikovL1·PP1+1.8675283866270191147196307165356PP1
Sebastian AhoL1·PP1+1.8179305382.6276198612545+1061186284PP1
Nikolaj EhlersL1·PP1+1.1676234365.7250185262616+9952237PP1
Jackson BlakeL2·PP1+0.3774232851.1110161153134+3447208ascendingPP1
Logan StankovenL2·PP2+0.3676202544.690171492623+529974245
Jordan StaalL3·PP2-0.0566131427/3321871333923+5705172259
Seth Jarvis-0.1137171935.4/78113114441811+42462177ascending
Taylor HallL2·PP2-0.1370152338.7/4560113432936+12372185declining
Jordan MartinookL3-0.2773111526.40298914429+632135233
William CarrierL3-0.36686814.500771771920+47196273
Eric RobinsonL4-0.72689816.70182961510+53111193
Mark JankowskiL4-0.866710817.11063404121+531981144
Jesperi KotkaniemiL4-0.875861116.4/231072682323+422591163declining
Bradly Nadeau-1.14317714/282050441790061111
Nicolas Deslauriers-1.2038010.800241311142-52142166
Stiven Sardarian-1.32273912/281038421513005795
Charlie Cerrato-1.4724279/241026381313005177
Felix Unger Sorum-1.6319257/24101725103003552
Viktor Neuchev-1.8412123/1500131571002235
Gleb Trikozov-1.8512112/120091875002534
Ivan Ryabkin-1.956022/170031237001518
Juha Jaaska-2.033000/600452100711
Defence · 13
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Shayne GostisbehereD3·PP1+1.0472124455.6/63240131377633+60113244PP1
Alexander NikishinD3·PP2+0.758192332811231309836+70228351
Sean WalkerD1+0.588071723.81115212111353+20234386bounce-back
K'Andre MillerD1·PP2+0.577882836321211159750+50212333ascendingbounce-back
Jaccob SlavinD2-0.347341518.403107201088+130128234declining
Jalen ChatfieldD2-0.577741215.300100486829+130116215
Juuso Välimäki-0.66702792067498626-20135202declining
Joel Nystrom-1.2748178.6/150056164215+2058114
Dominik Badinka-1.6817123/10001119262004556
Noel Fransén-1.849112/12001110142002435
William Hakansson-1.966011/12002791001618
Bryce Montgomery-2.023000/3000654001111
Ronan Seeley-2.033000/500235000810
Goalies · 2
GoalieGSWLOTLSV%GAASVSAGASHOGSAxGSAx/GS
Brandon Bussi55291870.9022.37117513021272.8-25.7-0.658
Pyotr Kochetkov29141340.9032.51657727712.3-4.4

Projected record and projected ice time are model estimates; ranks, lines, projections and trend signals trace to real data.