CAROLINA 
HURRICANES
FORWARDS
Jeff Skinner ($1.400m) / Eric Staal ($8.250m) / Zach Boychuk ($1.195m)
Brett MacLean ($0.900m) / David Legwand ($4.500m) / Chad Larose ($2.400m)
Lauri Korpikoski ($1.250m) / Brandon Sutter ($1.800m) / Mikael Samuelsson ($2.500m)
Drayson Bowman ($0.845m) / Zac Dalpe ($0.875m) / Troy Bodie ($0.575m)
Jerome Samson ($0.512m) / Jiri Tlusty ($0.600m)
DEFENSEMEN
Joni Pitkanen ($6.000m) / Scott Hannan ($2.500m)
Joe Corvo ($2.250m) / Tim Gleason ($2.750m)
Bryan Allen ($2.900m) / Jamie McBain ($0.850m)
Derek Joslin ($0.625m)
GOALTENDERS
Cam Ward ($6.300m) / Justin Peters ($0.525m)
SALARY CAP: $62,300,000
CAP PAYROLL: $52,304,166
CAP SPACE (23-man roster): $9,95,834
We had a lot of decisions to make this off-season. We came in with just 11 players from our NHL roster signed with >$30M committed to those 11 players.
It was tough to let Jussi Jokinen and Erik Cole walk, but had we been able to retain them it would have taken a commitment of ~$10M per year on our part. And with our budget of ~$53M would have left us with $13M to to use on 9 players. And knowing Joni Pitkanen was our top target to retain, we'd been down to $7M for 8 players.
We also knew we need to improve on the Power Play (ranked 19th in 2010-11), Penalty Kill (20th last year), Goals Allowed (21st), and in the face-off dot (29th last year).
Mikael Samulsson and Brett MacLean both like to crash the net and hang out in the crease on the power play, something we lacked last year. That should create more opportunities in close rather than relying on perimeter shots. It should also make Eric Staal and Jeff Skinner even more effective with bodies at the net.
On the PK we added Lauri Korpikoski, who ranked 6th overall in the NHL for short-handed time on the ice by forwards. We also brought in Scott Hannan who can eat up minutes and add toughness to our blueline in clearing out bodies for netminder Cam Ward.
Korpikoski (+17), Legwand (+13), Samuelsson (+8), Hannan (+3), all make us better at even strength and some grit, which we were sorely missing up front last year. And in Legwand and Korpi we gained two solid forwards who can win in the face-off circle.
In addition we were able to open spots for some of our NHL-ready youngsters like Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe. We also picked up two extra draft picks for a total of 4. We were thrilled with Alex Khoklachev (#12, who was #9 on our board), Mark Schiefele (#17, and #12 on our board), Rocco Grimaldi (#42, who we had at #13) and Mike McKee (#59, who was #40 on our board).
All-in-all we think we did very well with our limited budget and will make our return to the playoffs next season, while adding tremendous depth to our prospects pool going forward.
confirm
have signed huge, hard hitting defender Hal Gill to a 2 year deal worth about 2.5 million dollars per year
waiting on a final UFA offer
