LAS VEGAS – Everything is relative, of course, when it comes to getting “over the hump.”

The Buffalo Sabres haven’t made the playoffs since 2011, so they’d love to end a 14-year absence come springtime. Last week, Ryan Warsofsky, coach of a San Jose Sharks team that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2019, was willing to surrender one of his children to get a single victory after the Sharks dropped their first six games.

The Minnesota Wild have made the playoffs every year but two since 2013, yet they haven’t gotten past the first round in a decade. It led to a tense moment two years ago at an end-of-season news conference when GM Bill Guerin took umbrage with a reporter’s use of the phrase “getting over the hump.”

“What hump?” Guerin snapped back like Igor from Young Frankenstein.

So it’s almost laughable when folks talk about the Carolina Hurricanes and how they can’t get “over the hump.”

Since Rod Brind’Amour became Carolina’s coach in 2017, the Hurricanes have the best regular-season points percentage in the NHL at .756 and third-most points at 711, four behind the Bruins (who have played four more games) and three behind the Avalanche (who have played three more games). They’ve been to the Eastern Conference Final three times in those seven seasons and have won 10 playoff rounds – at least one in each of Brind’Amour’s seven years behind the bench.

Think the Sabres, Sharks, Wild and scores of other teams wouldn’t kill for such success?

“We’ve won a lot of rounds,” Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky told The Athletic during a sitdown last week in Las Vegas. “We just haven’t strung together three or four in one year. And I understand why people look at that the way they do. But, yeah, there are teams that go a long time without making the playoffs. There are teams that make the playoffs and don’t win in round one. There are teams that make the playoffs and don’t win in round two. You can set the bar wherever you want. Until we get to a championship, people are going to be questioning whether we will get there.

“I think we have a strong team and it’s set up to give us a number of cracks at it and I believe we will break through. But until we do, I understand the stories are going to be told the way they are.”

The reality is inside that locker room, the 82-game regular season is just an obligation to get to the place where they have a singular goal in mind. As Sebastian Aho says bluntly, “We’re here to win a Stanley Cup.”

The Canes don’t want to become the Sharks of yesteryear – a daunting regular-season team and strong playoff performer that just couldn’t win that ultimate prize. The Sharks came so close in 2016 before losing to the Penguins in the final round, and that was all she wrote.

The Hurricanes, like the Dallas Stars in the West, feel like they’re right there and now it’s just a matter of getting past the final step. They won their first five games, have gotten off to a 6-2 start and are returning home after a six-game road trip in which they went 4-2, including three games in a row against Western Conference contenders Vegas (loss), Colorado (win) and Dallas (loss).

Sure, Brind’Amour and players looked at the games as an early-season measuring stick, but Tulsky also has a good measure of his team. He thinks they’re a strong contender and whether they went 3-0 or 0-3 in those three games wasn’t going to shake his belief in his club, especially when they played much of the trip with two defensemen and a goalie out, ending the trip without defensemen Jaccob Slavin, K’Andre Miller and Shayne Gostisbehere, forwards Eric Robinson and William Carrier and goalie Pyotr Kochetkov.

Seth Jarvis is so nasty pic.twitter.com/HVhPNHqk5N

— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) October 24, 2025

In the 2023 and 2025 conference final, it was the Florida Panthers – winner of back-to-back Stanley Cups and three straight Prince of Wales Trophies – that the Hurricanes couldn’t get through. Tulsky is analytical in nature, but he’s not about to tear down what the Canes have built to add a bunch of players that can beat the hard-nosed, sometimes-bullying Panthers at their own game.

The reality is every year is different, and even though until proven otherwise the winner of the East expects they’ll have to go through South Florida and declaw the Panthers, Tulsky says it’s dangerous to build your team around one specific opponent.

“When Tampa won twice, people would’ve reacted to that one way and then Colorado won and people would’ve reacted differently,” Tulsky said. “Ultimately, we need to believe in what we’re doing and build the team our way and not try and match what one other team is doing. We feel like we’ve got a squad that is really designed to play a certain way and we just want to keep adding to it, and we want organic growth from our own players getting better and prospects coming into the lineup and adding reinforcements.”

The Hurricanes, when fully healthy, have proven to be a formidable opponent. Seth Jarvis is tied for third in the NHL with seven goals and looks to keep getting faster and smarter next to one of the league’s most underrated centers, Aho, who has four goals and 10 points in eight games. In the offseason, they added Miller and speedster Nikolaj Ehlers. Ehlers is still looking for his first goal despite ample chances and strong play as the first-line left wing, and Miller looked to be bouncing back from a rough year with the New York Rangers before getting hurt.

In Vegas last week, the Hurricanes’ most dangerous line was Taylor Hall-Logan Stankoven-Jackson Blake. Hall’s strong start is one big reason why Andrei Svechnikov, who has yet to record a point in eight games, had landed on the fourth line for several games in a row before being elevated against the Stars due to injuries. Hall came in the initial three-way Carolina-Chicago-Colorado Mikko Rantanen trade from the Blackhawks last winter. Stankoven came in the subsequent Rantanen deal from Dallas and Blake adds speed, scrappiness and creativity anywhere he plays in the lineup after a strong rookie year.

But when Tulsky says “reinforcements,” we also know he’s likely underselling his ultimate objective and that’s to again add a superstar to the lineup — not just short-term, but long-term.

Two years ago, the Hurricanes traded for Pittsburgh’s Jake Guentzel down the stretch. He was outstanding in Raleigh, but the Canes ultimately couldn’t sign him and he landed in Tampa on a long-term deal with a $9 million AAV. Last year, they acquired Rantanen from Colorado and tried to persuade him into signing a long-term extension. When he declined, they recovered quite nicely by sending him to Dallas for Stankoven, two first-round picks and two third-round picks.

So will the Hurricanes go big-game hunting again later this season?

There’s no doubt owner Tom Dundon is motivated to add a star to the fold. When the Wild were trying to extend Kirill Kaprizov’s contract before the season and reports came out that he initially turned down a $128 million contract over eight years, the assumption around the NHL was that Kaprizov didn’t want to re-sign there. In the three-week period between Kaprizov turning down the deal and signing a $136 million extension, league sources say the Hurricanes were the one team that reached out to the Wild to express an interest if it ever got to the point the Wild considered trading him.

Tulsky wouldn’t confirm that, but admitted “we also want acquisition growth through finding ways to get better around the league when we can.”

“We’re always looking to get better,” Tulsky said. “We’re going to look at everything that comes up, whether something gets labeled as big-game hunting or sort of more routine moves. That’s a matter of how the media and fans want to see it. But we’re just looking for anything we can find that’ll make our team better. I think every team wants to bring stars if they can. Stars are hard to come by. If we see an opportunity to get a player, a star almost always makes your team better and so it’s always going to be something we’re talking about.”

Tulsky also believes talents like Jarvis and Aho bring plenty of star power. While he doesn’t ever like to play the small-market card, Tulsky believes if they were in a different market, “those guys would get a level of attention that they don’t get playing for Carolina. It creates a narrative sometimes that we don’t have the stars that some bigger-city teams have just because our guys haven’t gotten the attention that they would’ve gotten somewhere else.”

Sebastian Aho iskee jälleen eikä ole jäänyt pisteittä koko kaudella! 🚨

Nyt kahdeksaan peliin 10 pistettä (4+6). 🌪️ pic.twitter.com/h4MbH4oiho

— NHL Suomi (@NHL_fi) October 26, 2025

And, by the way, the Hurricanes are often rumored to be looking at addressing their goaltending, but Tulsky says that doesn’t mean they’re not confident with Freddie Andersen and Kochetkov.

“We’re always looking for ways to upgrade the team anywhere. Goaltending is no exception,” he said. “Freddie has been really good for us. Pyotr’s got a minor issue, but he’ll be back soon and we’re very comfortable where we are. We’re always going to look and see if there are opportunities to get better, but it doesn’t mean we’re not content with where we are. We believe we have goalies who are capable of winning a Cup for us.”

In the 2023 conference final, the Hurricanes were without Svechnikov due to a torn ACL sustained not long after the trade deadline. That led to a serious lack of offensive output during a sweep to the Panthers. In last year’s playoffs, the Hurricanes got beat up throughout but were really hurt by Jalen Chatfield missing the conference final and Sean Walker getting hurt in Game 3.

So in Brind’Amour’s mind, not having their full group was a huge disadvantage in both series against Florida.

“I think our game suits really well for the playoffs and we don’t have to change much when we hit the playoffs,” Brind’Amour said. “We obviously have never been satisfied with where we finished, but I think we’re on the right track.”

A lot of teams would love to be in Carolina’s position, but until they win their first Stanley Cup since 2006, Tulsky says “content” is a word nobody around his organization would ever use.

“We’ve been a great team for five years now and it hasn’t been good enough yet,” he said. “And so ultimately, I think we’ve been good enough that we could have won a Cup any one of those years, but we needed breaks to go our way and our goal is to keep finding ways to get better so that we’re not relying on the breaks going our way.

“And so we still every day in practice, players and coaches are looking for ways they can get better. Every day, the management team is going over the league looking for ways we can make the team better. The culture here is very much about finding a way to take the next step at all times.”