First Camp Update for the Hurricanes

I can't believe this is the first training camp post for the Hurricanes that I've done this month and we've already seen most teams twice already.  For shame!  The Hurricanes took part in the Traverse City Rookie Tournament and I failed to get their rookie squad posted, but frankly, it is a bit late now, since the tournament officially ended on Wednesday.  I will move along, giving you what I have now with their newly-released training camp roster.

The Hurricanes were easily the shallowest team on my Summer roster lists, having only nine forwards, five defense and two goalies on it for the better part of the Summer.  This now leaves the door wide open for all sorts of new talent for the Southeast Division team and they might just have the talent to make some noise this year.

Up front, I'm looking at Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman and Jeff Skinner to take the lead for spots, which still leaves some room for another forward or two to stay in the running.  On defense, Jamie McBain has been earning the praises of many, while Bobby Sanguinetti may finally get his chance to breakthrough after an off-season trade from the Rangers.  Justin Peters was named the back-up early on in the Summer, before he even was re-signed, so he'll already have some expectations placed upon him in training camp.  With this much talent, they could breakout like the Avalanche did with all of their young talent and make some noise.  Just a thought.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Eric Staal	Joni Pitkanen	Cam Ward
Jussi Jokinen	Tim Gleason	Justin Peters
Brandon Sutter	Joe Corvo
Tuomo Ruutu	Brett Carson
Sergei Samsonov	Anton Babchuk
Chad Larose
Tom Kostopoulos
Erik Cole
Patrick Dwyer
Zach Boychuk	Jamie McBain	Justin Pogge
Jon Matsumoto	Bobby Sanguinetti	Mike Murphy
Jiri Tlusty	Bryan Rodney
Drayson Bowman	Jay Harrison
Zac Dalpe	Michal Jordan
Riley Nash	Austin Levi
Oskar Osala	Casey Borer
Jared Staal	Rasmus Rissanen
Matt Kennedy	Zack Fitzgerald
Jeff Skinner	Kyle Lawson
Stefan Chaput	Brett Bellemore
Chris Terry
Mike McKenzie
Nick Dodge
Jarome Samson
Nicolas Blanchard

Surprisingly, with such a small Summer roster, the Hurricanes were not the lowest team on the league's totem pole for annual salary cap projections.  They are pretty low, but they weren't last.  The nine forwards, five defense, two goalies and two buyouts came in at a total of $45.6 million, still above the salary cap floor.  They do have some sizable contracts on the team in Eric Staal and Cam Ward, so it shouldn't be such a surprise that they moved up on the list.  Of course, with more talent joining the active roster, that number will go up, but it shouldn't be anything to worry about.

I am kind of fond of the notion that the Hurricanes might be able to breakout like the Avalanche did with all of their young talent in 2010.  I might go out and look for Boychuk, Bowman and Skinner at the draft, project some good depth numbers and take a bit of a gamble there.  Of course, if there are some better projections available during those picks, I'll likely take them instead, but this is definitely an interesting thought.