The Carolina Hurricanes announced their season-opening roster today, featuring two goaltenders, seven defensemen and 13 forwards.
In goal, Frederik Andersen and Pyotr Kochetkov are the obvious tandem. Meanwhile on the blue line, six defenders were already locked in for a roster spot, in Jaccob Slavin, Brent Burns, Dmitry Orlov, Jalen Chatfield, Shayne Gostisbehere, and Sean Walker.
However, the team’s seventh defensemen on the roster is Bryce Montgomery. The defenseman was signed yesterday, with the cap hit on his deal putting the team within dollars of maximizing their long-term injured reserve cap relief. Given he spent last season in the ECHL and has yet to even play and AHL game, it seems incredibly unlikely that he remains on the team’s roster. There’s a good chance we'll see a different seventh defenseman swapped in for Montgomery.
Then up front, the majority of forwards to make the team also came as no surprise. All 10 of Sebastian Aho, William Carrier, Jack Drury, Seth Jarvis, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Jordan Martinook, Martin Necas, Jack Roslovic, Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov were locks for the roster. Meanwhile, Brendan Lemieux, Tyson Jost and Eric Robinson were all fairly good bets to take on depth roles within the forward group as well.
However, with only 22 players on the roster, one of the fairly notable final cuts was Jackson Blake. The Hurricanes prospect seemed to have a decent shot to make the team, and given the lack of talent at the bottom of the forward group as it stands, there’s still a chance we could see Blake, or another prospect like Bradly Nadeau or Felix Unger Sorum being brought up.
The Hurricanes open their season on Friday, in a back-to-back set against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
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