The funny thing about rooting for a team that wins a Stanley Cup is that when the season is over, you have to remind yourself that 30 other teams have been sitting on the sidelines just waiting for that battle to be done in order to fully embrace talking about next season. The NHL Draft is always the first real marker for when the rest of the league can embrace the ‘26-’27 season and beyond, but it’s really around now that everyone feels comfortable talking about next season.
There are several reasons
for this of course. The big one is the player movement that happens starting around the Draft and continues on Canada Day when free agents are able to sign new deals. We also have an idea that this summer is going to see that process drag out a little longer than usual thanks to offer sheets and the dominoes that fall around it. Bob has already talked about where the Canes stand according to the rumor mill and nothing has really changed. Don’t expect it to any time soon as things still need to be worked out across the league.
That said, you’d be allowed to start thinking of next year. That said there’s one more piece of business with this past year that the Hurricanes released later on Wednesday and it’ll lead us to the other tidbits
The names of the 2025-26 Carolina Hurricanes are now officially engraved on Lord Stanley’s Cup right before it is set to make the rounds to the various members of the team this summer. We know those sojourns begin soon, as Frederik Andersen mentioned while discussing his signing with the Oilers. Specifically he said his day with the Cup was in a couple of weeks, and honestly it makes sense that to try and fit in everyone who gets a day with it, those events have to be soon. Hopefully once each player gets the Cup we’ll hear about it and get a nice montage of their days with it.
As for the names, with the NHL limiting teams on names and the owner getting to put his whole family on there—which is their right as last year’s Panthers had more Violas on it than an orchestra—some were going to be left off. The two biggest ommisions on the staff perhaps would be Mike Sundheim and Bob Gorman, though it’s possible they agreed to have their names left off so that folks like Jorge Alves would be able to. It’s great to see Nicolas Deslauriers stamped on there, as his trade was for the expressed purpose of fighting for it. While he only saw one game in the playoffs, the attitude he brought and clear fit with the team off the ice was apparent with any quick social media search. That was only confirmed with him “signing” his extension at the rally.
This year’s Canes are the 9th team to be inscribed on the bottom band, and should be on the Cup for the next 57 years (please check me in the comments if my math is off) as the top most band is retired after 13 years to make room for the newest one, and each other band moves up one.
Earlier this week, the NHL announced that the 2026-27 schedule will be released on Thursday, July 16th. However, the Canes will know their first game a day earlier, July 15th, as the league will announce all of the Opening Night Matchups and the Stanley Cup Champion always gets an Opening Night Matchup.
A quick reminder that next season starts the 84 game regular season, effectively to bring it back to where you play every team in your division four times now instead of having to trim one game off of two of them to fit in the entire Western Conference home-and-home. This will come at the “cost” of two preseason games, and it also means the season will start earlier than it did last year—quite possibly late September instead of early October.
Something else to keep an eye on—The last three years ESPN has opened the season with a triple header, the first of those games starting around 5 PM Eastern. The defending Cup Champ Florida Panthers were in that first spot as ESPN opted for Pittsburgh and the Rangers at 8 PM. Despite setting records for the number of eyes watched this Final, it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Worldwide Leader do that again based on how the Canes were scheduled during the entirety of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Again, just a heads up.
As for where you’ll be able to watch the rest of the Hurricanes games, we still don’t know the answer to that. However the Ovies part of “Ovies and Giglio” did have a bit of a mysterious update late on Wednesday:
If you aren’t a regular listener to his “OG on Business” podcast, he discussed this with Demetri Ravanos a couple of months ago:
A very brief explainer if you haven’t kept up: the cable channel you used to watch the Hurricanes on basically since their existence started no longer exists. We do know the Canes will broadcast their games, and we do know that Mike Maniscalco and Tripp Tracy will be doing the broadcasts as they are hired by the team, not the channel. Beyond that, in effect, no one knows.
The theory from Ovies, which he explains above, is that he expected Carolina to follow in the footsteps of other NHL teams and land with Gray Media—because that’s where the old Raycom Sports folks landed after it effectively had to change how they operated with the ACC going solely to ESPN. There would be some sort of streaming component, too. He details why it all made sense in that YouTube clip. Now, however, it would appear that his sources are telling him this is not where the Canes are going to end up.
It’s not a surprise that we are having an answer now, as an interview Ovies did with the aforementioned Sundheim hinted that they were close.
All of these bread crumbs seem to lead to the idea that Carolina might use next week’s scheduling announcement to say what the new broadcast option will be. Will they finally be more accessible to folks who have cut the cord? Will they be easier or harder to watch? We should know soon.
Finally a little talk about what the Canes will wear next season.
You’d be forgiven if you had let this news slip past as it started to get out right at the heart of the Eastern Conference Finals. The NHL is continuing the very popular “all the teams have an alternate jersey for one season united by some sort of theme” program for 2026-27. Now, the first two iterations of this were the “Reverse Retro” jerseys we saw in the truncated 2021 season, and then the second version for the 22-23 season.
Well, it’s taken a bit of a break because the league has moved from Adidas to Fanatics as the main jersey sponsor, and with the switch they didn’t want to stress them out with another league-wide initiative such as this. Now, though, it appears they are ready to try this for a third time but now going with “Hometown Remix.”
Overall it’s smart to move away from the idea of “retro” jerseys when you have a lot of teams with next to no history and others who have a ton of history but have played in the exact same sweater for a century. The remix allows them to fully think outside the box and do something they may have always wanted to do, but for various reasons couldn’t.
As is the nature of these things, designs have already slipped out—the link above has a couple—and as we get closer to the release of the jerseys, more details have come out about Carolina’s version.
It started around the Stanley Cup when the “What Chaos!” pair was able to get their hands on the Canes’ version and, in exchange for seeing it, could describe it but not show it.
And yes, that hint in the photo is the big news. It would appear the team is taking another step forward in embracing Struttin’ Stormy by having it be the crest of the special jersey. DJ Bean further tries to describe the look, though it’s tough to visualize based on how he’s describing it.
The outstanding YouTube channel Icethetics further broke this down in their latest episode, including more info on all of the other teams. He also had a whole section of facts about the Canes Cup win in terms of jersey history they made—as well as one other interesting note
Everyone has been so focused on the Hometown Remix that the Canes’ red jerseys have slipped under the radar. As much as they have let their jersey evolve, it’s easy to forget that the current iteration of the red jersey has been around for almost a decade. It’s been slowly phased out and then memorably took a break in the 22-23 season as the Canes celebrated their 25th Anniversary in full throwback sweaters they carried on to the playoffs.
It’s fair to say the team was caught off-guard with just how popular that look was. The problem was it was only supposed to be a one-off. Then the league moved to Fanatics where no new jerseys could be made. Then the team had to go ahead and fix the road jerseys again because—well—they also didn’t realize how popular the Outdoor Series and Struttin’ Stormy look would be so needed to combine that. Finally they can get around to the red.
Might the success of the 25th anniversary jersey and the fact that the red is now considered the alternate jersey be enough to where the team will fully bring back the retro design? While it seemed as if the team was trying to move away from the original Hurricane logo, fans buying the jerseys with that design have shown just how popular it still is. For this team nine years is a long time to go with the same design, so it only makes sense that some sort of change for the red is coming.
We’ll see what shows up. The funny thing about jersey announcements is that they can be done at any time.
