Frank Cervalli

Hey, taking a heavyweight punch from Vegas to open the series, staying with their game plan, overwhelming Vegas, but it's kind of the story of Carolina's franchise arc as a whole.

You know, you get to three conference finals in a short period of time and you don't win.

Frankly, you don't get many wins at all.

Plenty of time and room for you to ask yourself questions.

Are we doing this right?

Do we need to change our approach?

They have been pretty headstrong in how they view the game, how they want to be coached, and how they want to play with style and structure, and also how they've acquired all of their players to fit that.

They are probably the league's model franchise in terms of operations from a talent-based perspective and how they go out and get those players.

And news for everyone else in the Eastern Conference is that

No, they've totally done business differently than everyone else.

And look at where they are now.

Championship winning team with half their roster under team control and signed through 2031.

They've got four first round picks in the next three years.

They closed this season, $11 million under the cap.

They have $12.5 million in cap space heading into next year.

And one of the things that's cracked me up the most about the narrative about Eric Tolsky and about these guys running the Hurricanes is that, oh, they're, quote, not hockey guys.

I knew Eric Tolsky when he worked in nanotechnology, when he was writing and covering the Flyers.

quite literally turned his entire life upside down and left a very high paying job to take an enormous pay cut and then ultimately move his family across the country so that he could work in hockey.

To me, sounds funny to say that's actually like the definition of a hockey guy.

Present is a good thing.