The Carolina Hurricanes are rolling again, and the spotlight hasn’t just been on the familiar names. Yes, Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and the “Junkyard Dawg” line have drawn plenty of attention, but the deeper reason Carolina is sitting at 5-1-1 through seven games is the work being done underneath the headlines.
That group has won five in a row after dropping its first two, and Rod Brind’Amour has already given the machine its own label. The Hurricanes are starting to look more like themselves, and three players in particular have helped steer that turnaround.
Sean Walker has been exactly what Carolina signed him to be: steady, dependable and everywhere at once. In his third season with the Hurricanes, the Keswick, Ontario native has settled in as a true two-way defenseman.
He blocks shots, interrupts plays in the defensive zone, finishes checks, gets under opponents’ skin and chips in offensively when the moment calls for it. Whether the night is chaotic or calm, Walker just keeps showing up and handling his business.
That consistency has shown up in the numbers, too. Walker has five assists in seven games this season, and four of those came in the Oct. 8 win over the Vancouver Canucks, the first four-point night of his career.
After that game and the team’s third straight win, he said, “I think you’re seeing every game we’re getting closer and closer back to our style of play and how we wanted to be starting the year, but obviously it wasn’t like that. These last couple of games have been more Hurricanes hockey, and when we’re doing that, we’re really hard to play against.”
Last season, Walker set career highs with 22 assists and 31 points, finishing with nine goals and 31 points in 81 games. With injuries forcing Carolina to lean on its blue line in different ways during 2025-26, he took on a larger load. This season, he’s picked up right where he left off.
Mark Jankowski has been just as surprising, only this time the surprise is how quickly the goals have come. Four goals in four straight games is the kind of run almost nobody would predict this early, but his history with the Hurricanes makes the scoring burst a little less shocking.
After being acquired on March 7, 2025, he once scored four goals on four shots in a week. So when Carolina started winning and Jankowski started finishing, the fit made sense.
His current streak began on Oct. 6 against the Montreal Canadiens, and through seven games he has four goals and five points. Last season, he totaled 11 goals and 21 points in 68 games, which means he is already tracking toward a bigger year.
The best season of his career came in 2017-18 with the Calgary Flames, when he posted 17 goals and 25 points. Whether he gets near that mark or not, Jankowski has already made himself one of the season’s most reliable sources of offense.
William Carrier has perhaps been the most unexpected of the three, at least in terms of role. No one had him penciled in on the top line with Aho and Svechnikov to open the year, especially with Eric Robinson starting there while Seth Jarvis recovered from off-season shoulder surgery. Once Brind’Amour adjusted the lines after the first two games, Carrier moved up and has taken off in the best start of his career.
Over the last five games, he has four assists, including two on Oct. 11 against the Philadelphia Flyers. For the season, he has five assists in seven games; last year, it took him until game 30 to reach that total. He finished 2025-26 with seven goals and 18 points in 70 games, and even with injuries limiting his time in Raleigh, he has remained a presence whenever he’s available.
After the Hurricanes’ fifth straight win, Carrier said the group still has work to do, even if it has found its rhythm. “We just wanted to find our game.
It took a little bit of time, a couple of games, but I think we finally got it. We roll four lines, and everyone plays hard.
It’s a long season, so there are a lot of games coming up, and we need four lines to play.”
That kind of production from Walker, Jankowski and Carrier is a big part of why Carolina has climbed back into form so quickly. The Hurricanes will try to keep it going Tuesday night against the Washington Capitals in the first “Frozen Frenzy” of the season, with all 32 NHL teams in action. Carolina lost 5-2 to Washington on Oct. 2, and now gets a chance to push the streak to six as it heads toward its North Carolina State Fair road trip.
In Other News...
Hurricanes Suddenly Face An Early Test They Did Not Want
Jordan Staals absence lands as a jarring early-season hurdle for a Carolina group that usually prides itself on stability down the middle. Rod BrindAmour confirmed the captain will miss one to two months with a calf tear, and the Hurricanes are already adjusting their forward structure around it, with Mark Jankowski moving to a new line and expected to stay there.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi has also been shifted back to center as Carolina tries to keep its balance intact through the stretch ahead. In goal, Pyotr Kochetkov is projected to start against the Washington Capitals, another small sign that the Hurricanes are trying to steady the ship while one of their most important leaders is sidelined. [Read more 🡒]
Hurricanes Suddenly Face A Major Problem Without Their Captain
The Hurricanes are suddenly staring at a stretch they did not expect to navigate without Jordan Staal, their captain and one of the clubs most reliable centers. Staal is expected to miss one to two months because of a calf tear, a hit to Carolinas structure that goes beyond the box score and reaches into the way the team handles tough minutes, faceoffs and late-game situations.
For a group built on depth and detail, losing a player with Staals role forces everyone else to absorb more responsibility almost immediately. The timing is especially awkward with the season still taking shape, and it leaves Carolina trying to protect its rhythm while waiting for one of its most trusted voices to work his way back. [Read more 🡒]
Hurricanes Suddenly Have A Bigger Taylor Hall Concern
Taylor Hall has quickly become part of the Hurricanes early-season equation, working on the top line and producing five points in seven games. So when he exited against the Capitals with an upper-body injury, it immediately raised the kind of concern Carolina did not need this early in the schedule.
The bigger issue now is how long the Hurricanes might have to get by without him. If Hall is sidelined beyond this game, the organization may need to look to Chicago for reinforcements, with Bradly Nadeau or Felix Unger Sorum among the options to be recalled. [Read more 🡒]