Here are five key questions as the Carolina Hurricanes enter the 2025 National Hockey League playoffs.

#1. Aren’t the Hurricanes now past the point where merely making the playoffs is considered a good season?

Yes.

When Texas-based billionaire Tom Dundon purchased the Hurricanes and then quickly hired franchise legend Rod Brind’Amour as the team’s head coach in May 2018, the Canes had just completed an embarrassing nine-year run (2009-10 through 2017-18) in which they didn’t make the playoffs — in an era when the postseason bracket still included more than half the league’s teams — even a single time.

Now, in the immediate aftermath of that nine-season playoff drought (one of the longest in NHL history), Carolina has made seven consecutive trips to the playoffs to begin the Dundon/Brind’Amour era. Only the Toronto Maple Leafs (nine), Colorado Avalanche (eight) and Tampa Bay Lightning (eight) have longer, active streaks of success in that regard.

Thanks in part to the Hurricanes’ two trips to the Eastern Conference finals — in 2019 and 2023 — and in part to the fact that the Canes have won five of their previous six first-round series under Brind’Amour, there is absolutely no “happy to be here” element to the postseason in Raleigh, among the coaches, players or fans.

While some Carolina supporters have a “Stanley Cup finals or bust” attitude toward this year’s team, the reality is that the Hurricanes had only the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference this season, behind Washington, Toronto and Tampa Bay.

It would be viewed as a massive disappointment if the Canes can’t get past a weakened-by-injury New Jersey team in the first round. (See below.) After that, though, the competition is likely to get much, much tougher, so anything can happen.

#2. Which teams are the favorites to win the Stanley Cup this year?

One aspect of the NHL playoffs that’s different than those of many other team sports is that the favored teams aren’t typically heavy favorites. In other words, you’re not going to find a team that enters the postseason with a 50 or even 25 percent chance of winning the championship very often.

That theme remains solidly in place this year.

According to MoneyPuck.com, a hockey analytics website, the Carolina Hurricanes are the very, very slight favorite to win the 2025 Stanley Cup. That’s a bit unusual, because the Canes didn’t even win their own division and ranked only 10th in the league (among 32 teams) in regular-season points.

Here’s the breakdown of the website’s eight favorites heading into the postseason:

Rank/Team (Regular-Season Results) — Odds To Win Cup

1. Carolina Hurricanes (47-30-5, 99 points) — 10.5%
2. Vegas Golden Knights (50-22-10, 110 points) — 10%
3. Winnipeg Jets (56-22-4, 116 points) — 9.8%
4. Florida Panthers (47-31-4, 98 points) — 9.3%
5. Toronto Maple Leafs (52-26-4, 108 points) — 8.7%
6. Colorado Avalanche (49-29-4, 102 points) — 7.8%
7. Tampa Bay Lightning (47-27-8, 102 points) — 7.4%
8. Dallas Stars (50-26-6, 106 points) — 7.1%

Underlining the difficult nature of winning even in the first round of the NHL postseason, no team is considered to have more than a roughly two-thirds (67 percent) chance of advancing to the second round. The Hurricanes are considered to have only a 57 percent chance of defeating New Jersey in their opening series.

#3. What are the biggest lingering questions about the Hurricanes’ chances of winning it all?

Goal-scoring and goaltending.

Generally speaking, the #1 doubt about the Hurricanes over the past seven seasons has been whether they have enough offensive firepower to continue their winning ways in the playoffs. At times, their offense has wilted versus bigger/strong postseason opponents or against an elite or red-hot playoff goaltender.

While the Canes ranked ninth in the league in goals (3.24 per game) during the regular season and were especially efficient during five-on-five play, they had none of the league’s top 30 goal-scorers. Rising star Seth Jarvis (32 goals, 35 assists) and All-Star veteran Sebastian Aho (29 goals, 45 assists) offer tremendous skill, production and entertaining play, but will they get enough help from their teammates?

Carolina attempted to solve this lingering issue with the midseason acquisition of high-scoring Colorado star Mikko Rantanen. (The Canes gave up one of their top offensive players, Martin Necas, as part of that deal.) When it became clear that Rantanen wasn’t interested in re-signing with Carolina after the season, though, he was dealt to Dallas just before the NHL’s trade deadline.

Now the offensive support for Jarvis and Aho likely will have to come from some combination of forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Logan Stankoven (acquired in the Rantanen trade), Taylor Hall (also part of the Rantanen deal), Jack Roslovic and Jackson Blake, plus defense-first veteran Jordan Martinook and team captain Jordan Staal. Defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, who runs the team’s top power-play unit, also can be a dynamic offensive weapon.

Similarly, at goaltender, Carolina has two quality players but nobody who is considered truly elite.

Injuries limited veteran Frederik Andersen to only 22 starts (13-8-1) during the regular season, but he played well down the stretch and is expected to be the starter in net against New Jersey. Andersen, 35, led the Anaheim Ducks to the Western Conference finals 10 years ago and has a solid postseason record overall (38-30, 2.46 GAA, .914 save percentage), but he also has had major playoff disappointments while with both Toronto and Carolina. Pyotr Kochetkov (27-16-3) is Andersen’s talented but volatile backup.

Meanwhile, four of this year’s top playoff contenders have starting goalies who were spectacular during the regular season: Washington (Logan Thompson), Toronto (Anthony Stolarz), Tampa Bay (Andrei Vasilevskiy) and Winnipeg (Connor Hellebuyck). Another dangerous team, Florida, has a proven veteran (36-year-old Sergei Bobrovsky) who helped the Panthers win the Stanley Cup just last season.

#4. How do the Canes match up against their first-round opponent, the New Jersey Devils?

Carolina was the better squad during the regular season, and Carolina is the healthier squad entering the postseason, but the teams split their four regular-season matchups (each winning twice on home ice), and New Jersey presents at least two legitimate causes for concern.

Perhaps the biggest reason the Hurricanes are such a significant favorite in this series is that New Jersey will be missing its superstar, center Jack Hughes, who suffered a major shoulder injury in March and won’t return until next season. The Devils often struggle offensively, and without their most dynamic skill player, it’s likely that they will face an uphill battle against a Carolina team that’s famous for limiting opponents’ shots and playing with great intensity, consistency and discipline defensively.

The main reasons the Devils remain somewhat dangerous, though, are their fantastic special teams and their on-his-game goaltender.

New Jersey ranks second in the NHL in penalty-killing (82.7% success rate) and third on the power play (28.2% success rate). In comparison, the Hurricanes have the league’s top penalty-killing efficiency (83.6%) but only the 25th-ranked power play (18.7%). In the absence of Hughes, the Devils’ most dangerous offensive players are left wing Jesper Bratt (21 goals, 67 assists) and center Nico Hischier (35 goals, 34 assists), whose 14 power-play goals ranked fifth in the NHL during the regular season.

Between the pipes, the Devils offer an imposing figure in 6-foot-6, 207-pound veteran Jacob Markstrom, who had a strong regular season (26-16-6, 2.50 GAA, .900 save percentage) despite missing more than a month with a knee problem. Markstrom, 35, made his NHL debut 14 years ago and was the playoff starter for Vancouver in 2020 and Calgary in 2022, although he’s never led a team past the second round of the postseason.

Side note: If you think you’re seeing a lot of former Hurricanes wearing Devils uniforms during this series, you’re not hallucinating. Defenseman Dougie Hamilton, forward Erik Haula, forward Stefan Noesen and defenseman Brett Pesce (nine full seasons) all previously played for the Canes.

#5. Who is Alexander Nikishin, and why is he considered a wild card in this year’s playoffs?

The most exciting aspect of this story is that Nikishin, a 23-year-old Russian defenseman who was drafted by Carolina in 2020, has finally signed a contract with the Hurricanes, after proving himself as one of the top players in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) over the past several seasons.

The KHL is widely considered the second-best hockey league in the world, behind only the NHL, and Nikishin’s play for SKA Saint Petersburg over the past three campaigns solidified him as the best defenseman in the world who wasn’t yet playing in the NHL.

A lot of dominoes had to fall in the Hurricanes’ favor for Nikishin’s arrival in time for this year’s NHL playoffs to become a reality. His Russian team was eliminated from the playoffs on April 11 rather than extending its season. The SKA Saint Petersburg owners, knowing they had leverage because of the Canes’ urgency, had to agree to reasonable compensation for an early termination of Nikishin’s contract. The player then endured complicated, lengthy visa and travel complications before finally arriving in the United States on April 18.

In terms of pure ability, the only Hurricanes defenseman who would rank clearly ahead of Nikishin is 30-year-old Jaccob Slavin, who has been the best “defensive defenseman” in the entire NHL for many years now.

However, it could take a while for Nikishin to learn Carolina’s system, especially with a major language barrier in play. The Hurricanes’ other three Russian players — Kochetkov, Svechnikov and especially fellow defenseman Dmitry Orlov — have been helping as translators, having become functional in English during their time in the NHL, but it’s not yet clear when or even if Brind’Amour will feel comfortable throwing Nikishin directly into the intensity of postseason play.