Kochetkov has been solid this season for Carolina, posting a 10-2-0 record with a 2.42 goals against average and a .904 save percentage. His underlying numbers have been terrific in 13 games, with a goals saved above expected of 3.9 (as per MoneyPuck).

In other Metropolitan Division notes:

• The Hurricanes have recalled defenseman Riley Stillman from the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League (Twitter link). The 26-year-old hasn’t appeared in an NHL game since the 2022-23 season and will likely be Carolina’s seventh defenseman tomorrow night when they take on the Rangers. Stillman spent all of last season in the AHL with the Rochester Americans and has suited up in four games this year, tallying a single assist. Stillman has played parts of five seasons in the NHL, registering four goals and 22 assists in 158 games.
• Aaron Portzline of The Athletic is reporting that Columbus Blue Jackets forward Cole Sillinger will miss tomorrow night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens with an upper-body injury. Sillinger took a skate to the head halfway through Columbus’ victory over Carolina on Saturday night, but the Blue Jackets haven’t officially stated the reason for Sillinger’s absence. His loss will be a big one for the team as the 21-year-old is fifth in team scoring with three goals and nine assists in 20 games. He also plays on both the power play and the penalty kill, which will leave Columbus shorthanded on both sides of their specialty teams.

Rod has been instrumental to the success we’ve had over the last six seasons. Ever since he joined the organization 24 years ago, Rod has embodied what it means to be a Hurricane. We hope to keep him a Hurricane for life.

While this deal doesn’t make Brind’Amour a Hurricane for life, it will keep him around for the foreseeable future as Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic reports (Twitter link) that this deal will run for the next five years.

A few weeks ago, a report from TSN’s Darren Dreger indicated that the Hurricanes had pulled an extension offer for Brind’Amour off the table, but that extension talks were advancing after the initial report. After Carolina was ousted from the playoffs at the hands of the New York Rangers, speculation began to emerge that Brind’Amour and the Hurricanes organization may be headed their separate ways.

The speculation advanced so much in the last few days, that Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun reported that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be postponing their search for head coach to see if Brind’Amour would ultimately become available. However, their getting a deal done sheds some light on the Maple Leafs’ pivot towards Craig Berube as their next head coach.

A legendary part of the Hurricanes organizational history, Brind’Amour began his coaching career as Carolina’s Director of Player Development during the 2010-11 NHL season, one year after he retired as a player. Beginning in the 2011-12 season, Brind’Amour was named an assistant coach, a position he would hold until the 2018-19 season.

Taking over as the head coach at the beginning of the 2018-19 season, Brind’Amour helped turn around a Hurricanes team that experienced several years of mediocrity. In his first year behind the bench, he would coach Carolina to the 2019 Eastern Conference Finals before eventually being swept by the Boston Bruins.

The Hurricanes would reach the Eastern Conference Finals once more under Brind’Amour’s reign, this time being eliminated by the Florida Panthers in another sweep. Throughout his six-year tenure as head coach for Carolina, Brind’Amour has amassed an impressive 278-130-44 in the regular season, along with three Metropolitan Division crowns.

If there is one, the major drawback of Brind’Amour’s track record in Carolina is the lack of Stanley Cup Finals appearances. The Hurricanes have become one of the deeper teams on paper, but have been unable to conquer the Eastern Conference up to this point.

In 74 postseason games as a head coach, Brind’Amour and the Hurricanes have only recorded 38 wins, a 10% dropoff from their regular season success. With their last Stanley Cup Final appearance coming nearly 20 years ago, the time is now for Brind’Amour to coach this team to the promised land.

ESPN’s Kevin Weekes was first to report that Brind’Amour and his assistants received contract extensions. 

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

The Hurricanes, Bruins, Stars, and Golden Knights currently lead their respective divisions, though it’s a close race in three of them. Only the Bruins have a substantial lead, with their 32-4-4 record pacing the entire NHL.

Interestingly enough, three of the four coaches named were involved in something of an employment carousel this offseason. Cassidy was fired by Boston and eventually took the job in Vegas after they dismissed DeBoer. DeBoer took a job in Dallas, one that had only been filled by Rick Bowness after Montgomery’s dismissal in 2020. Montgomery in turn took over in Boston, which gave him another chance as an NHL head coach.

Brind’Amour is the tenured professor of the bunch, taking over as head coach of the Hurricanes in 2018. He won the Jack Adams in 2021, and has an overall record of 199-95-35, plus four playoff series wins. It’s been an impressive transition from player to assistant to head coach for Brind’Amour, who basically never stopped working for the Hurricanes after arriving in 2000. He is reprising his role as head coach of the Metro, after being their last season.

The selections show just how quickly the NHL coaching wheel turns, with Cassidy and DeBoer both appearing at this game with their previous teams. DeBoer has actually gone with three in a row, appearing as the head coach of the Pacific in 2017 with the Sharks as well.

The final player selections will be announced on January 19, and the skills competition kicks off February 3.

After seven years as an assistant, Brind’Amour was promoted to head coach back in May of 2018 and he has done quite well in the three years since then.  Over that stretch, Carolina has a 120-66-20 record, good for a .631 points percentage which is the best in franchise history.  Meanwhile, their special teams this season were dominant with top-three finishes on both the power play (25.6%) and penalty kill (85.2%), another franchise first.  That helped lead them to 80 points this season, good enough for first in the Central Division and third in the league to Colorado and Vegas.

Minnesota’s Dean Evason finished second in voting while Florida’s Joel Quenneville came in just behind Evason for third.  However, Brind’Amour had nearly half of the first place votes (61/127) so the race was not particularly close.  Adam Vingan of The Athletic (Twitter link) provides the full voting results.

Rod has been the driving force behind the culture change we’ve undergone here. He keeps our players motivated, demands accountability, and has our team ready to compete every night. He has truly raised the bar for our organization, and we’re thrilled to have him continue as our coach for years to come.

At the accompanying press conference, Brind’Amour confirmed that the delay in announcing the contract came down to working out deals with the rest of the coaching and training staff. A franchise icon, he explained that he would have a “hard time” being a head coach somewhere else in the league. Brind’Amour of course isn’t just a coach for the Hurricanes, he was the team’s captain during their only Stanley Cup championship in 2006 and is about as tied into the identity of the organization as one person can be.

In fact, Waddell explained that if a time comes when Brind’Amour no longer wants to be behind the bench, the organization would find a role for him somewhere else. The coach even hinted that he would want to join the front office at some point. Even as a first-time head coach, Brind’Amour’s time in Carolina is going well. Through three seasons he has a 120-66-20 record, taking the team to the playoffs each year. Should he win the Jack Adams, it would be the first time a Hurricanes coach takes home the award.

A three-year contract will keep him in Carolina for a while, a good sign for a team that has a strong core. The team hasn’t quite gotten to the point of Stanley Cup favorite, but was certainly a contender this season after finishing first in the Central Division with a 36-12-8 record. Brind’Amour’s next challenge may be replacing Dougie Hamilton, should the top-pairing blueliner not return in free agency.

It’s hard for fans to really know the nuances of each finalist for the first three awards that will be announced next week. The King Clancy and Masterton are given to players just as much because of their off-ice interactions and leadership as their performance during the season. The Willie O’Ree, which will be awarded on Wednesday, is given to a community hero.

So let’s look ahead a few days to Thursday and the Jack Adams Award to see what the PHR community thinks should happen. Does the honor belong to Rod Brind’Amour of the Carolina Hurricanes, Dean Evason of the Minnesota Wild, or Joel Quenneville of the Florida Panthers?

The year before Brind’Amour took over behind the bench in Carolina, the Hurricanes weren’t very good. Even though they had strong performances from young players like Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, and Jaccob Slavin, the team didn’t have the goaltending to compete in the tough Metropolitan Divison, which had five teams finish with at least 97 points. Carolina finished the year with a 36-35-11 record, missing the playoffs. Assistant Rod took over (along with several major trades to shake up the roster) and the team took off. Three years later and Brind’Amour is a Jack Adams finalist following a 36-12-8 regular season, good for third in the NHL.

Evason perhaps performed an even more impressive turnaround in Minnesota. Sure, the Wild made the playoffs six seasons in a row from 2012-2018, but the core that took them to many of those postseason appearances was either long gone or in a dramatic decline by the time he took over in 2020. He had just a taste during the 2019-20 season before COVID shut things down, but it was obviously a good move for the Wild to bring him back. A year after losing in four games to the Vancouver Canucks in the bubble qualification round, Minnesota was reborn under Evason into an exciting, must-watch hockey club. Kirill Kaprizov has a lot to do with that transformation, but so does the rookie head coach, who posted the best winning percentage in Wild history at .670 this season. Minnesota’s record of 35-16-5 tied them with Tampa Bay for eighth-best in the league, but they just were unlucky enough to run into the powerhouse Vegas Golden Knights in the first round (and pushed them to the limit to boot).

’Quenneville was lucky enough to have one of the best young cores in the league, anyone could have won those Cups with Chicago’ said many of his detractors when he signed a massive contract with the Panthers in 2019. Maybe that young Blackhawks core was lucky to have him, too. The legendary head coach had another outstanding year behind the bench, capitalizing on some savvy front office moves from Bill Zito to take the Panthers to the fourth-best record in the NHL. Incredibly, the .705 points percentage that Florida managed this season is the second-highest of Quenneville’s Hall of Fame career, only trailing the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season (which happened to end pretty well).

Of course, these weren’t the only strong head coaching performances this season. The New York Islanders’ recent playoff run would likely make Barry Trotz the favorite, but it is of course a regular season award. Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins navigated injuries to nearly his entire roster and had his club in a position to do some damage in the postseason. Even someone like Rick Bowness in Dallas should get some credit for managing a winning record in a year that nearly everything went wrong for the Stars (just imagine if a handful of those 14 overtime/shootout losses had gone their way).

So, PHR faithful, we ask you who you would give the Jack Adams to this season. Is it one of the finalists, or another one of the league’s head coaches? Cast your vote and make sure to explain it in the comments!

[Mobile users click here to vote]

The finalists for the 2020-21 season are Joel Quenneville of the Florida Panthers, Dean Evason of the Minnesota Wild and Rod Brind’Amour of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Quenneville, 62, certainly isn’t unfamiliar with the trophy but hasn’t held it in quite some time. The veteran NHL coach took home the award in 2000 with the St. Louis Blues and was the runner-up in 2013 with the Chicago Blackhawks. Just two finalist appearances is surprising for a man who is quickly closing in on 1,000 career wins. Quenneville sits second all-time behind only Scotty Bowman in the coaching ranks with 962 regular season wins and won the Stanley Cup three times in Chicago. He would be the Panthers’ first Jack Adams winner if he takes it home following the 37-14-5 season the team registered in 2020-21.

Evason will try to stand in his way despite having less than 82 games under his belt as an NHL head coach. The 56-year-old replaced Bruce Boudreau last season and now has a .669 winning percentage in his 68 games behind the Minnesota bench. While the addition of Kirill Kaprizov certainly helped, Evason turned the Wild into an exciting, competitive team that took the Vegas Golden Knights to seven games in the first round. Evason is only signed through next season but has quickly proven his worth as the answer in Minnesota.

Speaking of contracts, that’s all the buzz around Brind’Amour these days, even as he receives a nomination for the Jack Adams. The Hurricanes head coach isn’t signed for next season and this award is just another indication of how well he has done in his short tenure behind the Carolina bench. Since taking over in 2018, the Hurricanes have gone 120-66-20 in the regular season reached the playoffs all three years and the Conference Finals once. The 50-year-old is off to an outstanding start with his young group in Carolina and could be considered the favorite for this award.

Previously, it had come up that Brind’Amour was focused on securing contract extensions for his entire coaching staff as well as his own. Today, Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic tweets that there is still work to be done on those assistants’ contracts and that it is “important” to Brind’Amour that they get them.

That’s not to say things won’t get worked out between the Hurricanes and their franchise icon. Not only was Brind’Amour the captain when the team hoisted its only Stanley Cup in 2006, he’s also been one of the most successful coaches in the NHL since he took the reins in 2018, winning 120 of his 206 regular season games. Brind’Amour is beloved by the fan base and it would be lunacy for the organization to let him go, unless the contract demands are completely unreasonable.

The Hurricanes may have been defeated in the second round, going quietly against the Tampa Bay Lightning, but it’s hard to really critique what they’ve done to this point. The team is full of young stars that are just starting to realize their potential and the coaching/management group has done a great job maximizing their resources to this point. Until it is done, anything can happen, but it seems very likely that Brind’Amour–and his full staff–will be returning.

Over that stretch, the Hurricanes have become a consistent threat.  The team made the playoffs in each of his first two seasons behind the bench after missing the postseason in nine straight years.  In his first year behind the bench, they made it to the Eastern Conference Final while they were ousted in the first round a year ago after being the Rangers in the Qualifying Round.

This season, Brind’Amour has helped take Carolina to a higher level.  Entering play today, the Hurricanes currently lead the league in points with 80 in 54 games, a pace of 121 over a full 82-game season.  They’ve clinched the Central Division title and are in the top ten in goals scored (eighth) and allowed (fourth) despite dealing with some key injuries up front and between the pipes as the presumptive starter at the beginning of the year in Petr Mrazek has only been able to play 11 times.

If the deal gets finalized at the terms that Friedman reported, it’s definitely a below-market price tag as veteran head coaches have been able to command twice that much or more in recent years.  While Brind’Amour – who has led Carolina to a 120-64-20 record – doesn’t have quite the track record that coaches like Mike Babcock, Alain Vigneault Claude Julien, Barry Trotz, Todd McLellan, and Peter Laviolette all had at the time of their hires (where they received at least $4MM), it stands to reason that he could have commanded considerably more had he hit the open market.  Instead, it appears he’s going to stay where he is and is willing to take a discount to do so which is great news for the Hurricanes.

• Vancouver Canucks head coach Travis Green is still waiting for his contract extension. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun reports that a resolution is expected to come before the end of the season – which for the Canucks is still almost two weeks away – but he adds that there has not been any change to the status quo of late. Green, like Tocchet, took over a struggling team in 2017-18 and has improved the group, including finishing third in the Pacific Division last season and advancing to the second round of the playoffs. While the current campaign has not gone as planned, with Vancouver on the verge of statistical elimination even with a number of games in hand on their North Division competitors, the organization is happy with Green and LeBrun notes that there continues to be mutual interest in a new multi-year deal. With that said, Green is among the bottom-third of coaches in terms of compensation and is seeking a raise, but LeBrun reports that the Canucks have not improved their offer recently. If the two sides truly want to get a deal done before the end of the regular season, they need to get to work.
• Rod Brind’Amour is another coach who is awaiting a contract extension and there is little doubt that the leader of the President’s Trophy favorites will get a new, long-term deal. However, Dreger notes that the Hurricanes want to get the new deal done before the postseason, which leaves little time to work out the details. Brind’Amour has previously stated that he wants all of his fellow coaches and support staff to also have new deals finalized before he inks his own deal, so the Carolina Hurricanes have a number of negotiations to complete over the next week or two.

They don’t have an extension done yet for next year and I understand that one of the biggest issues there is that Brind’Amour has asked that as much as he wants himself to get a contract extension, he also wants extensions for his coaching staff, the training staff and the equipment staff–which also aren’t signed for next year.

As Friedman explains, the odds are still on Brind’Amour signing with the Hurricanes, but there are teams “that would like to back up the Brinks truck” to steal him away from Carolina. It’s easy to understand why after the success he’s had through the early part of his coaching career. In three seasons, Brind’Amour is currently sitting at a 117-64-19 record, which would put him sixth all-time in winning percentage among coaches with at least 200 games.

Obviously, some of that is the Hurricanes core coming into its own, but there’s no doubt that Brind’Amour has impressed behind the bench. The fact that he is now sticking his neck out for the rest of the staff will only improve his reputation, even if it does make it a little more difficult to work out a new contract in Carolina.

Of course, there is now an NHL team without a head coach and it happens to be managed by former teammate and long-time Hurricanes colleague Ron Francis. The Seattle Kraken are taking their time deciding who will lead the team during their inaugural season and though there has not been a direct connection yet to Brind’Amour, you can bet they would be one of the (many) teams keeping an eye on the situation in Carolina.

Given how strong the Hurricanes have been – they’re 96-58-13 since Brind’Amour was promoted to the position back in 2018 – the 50-year-old is well-positioned to land a sizable raise.  Many recent deals handed out to proven head coaches have been in the $3MM to $5MM range though to be fair, a lot of those came before the pandemic and the economic environment is much different now.

Having said that, Carolina has been a team that has been a bit stingy when it comes to their off-ice personnel, instead opting to concentrate its financial resources on its on-ice talent, a strategy that has worked so far.  But there are undoubtedly teams keeping tabs on this situation, LeBrun notes, and if Brind’Amour was to make it to the open market, he would get interest from elsewhere.  In his latest column for The Athletic (subscription link), Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon expressed confidence that an extension will get done and Brind’Amour in the past has said that he only wants to coach in Carolina.  Until that deal gets done though, he remains their most intriguing pending free agent.