The Carolina Hurricanes' minutes leader from Sunday's Stanley Cup-clinching Game 6 victory was a 5-foot-11 undrafted defenseman. Their leading goal-scorer in the playoffs was a 165-pound center who drew questions from several skeptics as to whether he could even play the position. Their starting goalie was claimed off waivers at the beginning of the year.
The 2025-26 Hurricanes didn't just break stereotypes: They obliterated them with a dominant 16-3 playoff run.
There are often preconceived notions about what Cup-winning teams look like, and the Hurricanes, for the most part, don't fit the bill. They don't have a bona fide No. 1 goalie or a prototypical No. 1 defensemen, and they weren't carried by a No. 1 center (Sebastian Aho, the closest thing to a superstar on Carolina's roster, had a good but not great postseason).
But perhaps that's appropriate, considering their general manager, Eric Tulsky, comes from a nontraditional hockey background.
Tulsky never played competitive hockey and isn't related to someone who did, unlike many NHL GMs. He studied chemistry and physics at Harvard and has a PhD from Cal. He was working in nanotechnology when he started blogging about hockey analytics in 2011. This X post of his from 2014 began recirculating Sunday night, for good reason.
I can understand why the default would be to trust that NHL teams know more about every aspect of the game than random bloggers.
— Eric Tulsky (@EricTulsky) July 23, 2014
The Hurricanes hired Tulsky as a consultant that same year. He's only been Carolina's GM since 2024, but his fingerprints are all over this roster.
Among his first moves was signing defenseman Sean Walker to a modest five-year, $18-million deal as a free agent. Undrafted out of Bowling Green, the 31-year-old Walker logged a team-high 23:50 on Sunday. He provided a fearless physical presence throughout the playoffs despite his 5-foot-11 frame, delivering several massive hits in the Cup Final.
Logan Stankoven, the centerpiece of the return in last year's much-maligned Mikko Rantanen trade, scored a team-high 11 goals in the playoffs. The 5-foot-8 Stankoven played wing in his first two seasons before shifting to center ahead of 2025-26. Many wondered if he was too small to play down the middle on a team with Stanley Cup aspirations. Instead, he centered the postseason's most effective line between Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake. That trio notably made a combined $4.89 million this season.
And how about Brandon Bussi? After toiling in the Boston Bruins' farm system for the last four years, Carolina claimed him off waivers at the start of the season. The 27-year-old made the most of the opportunity, going 31-6-2 during the regular season. He then took a back seat to veteran Frederik Andersen in the first three rounds of the playoffs before coming off the bench cold and posting a .931 save percentage over four games in the Cup Final, including a 22-save shutout in Game 6.
Until this year, the Hurricanes were known as a team that couldn't get over the hump. They'd lost in the conference finals three times since Rod Brind'Amour assumed the head coaching position in 2018. Carolina went 1-12 in those conference final games, with its lone win coming in last year's lopsided affair with the Florida Panthers.
In a copycat league, it would've been easy to understand if the Hurricanes tried to be more like the Panthers: bigger and meaner with more star power.
Instead, Tulsky trusted the process.
Carolina's marquee offseason addition was Nikolaj Ehlers, an undersized, speedy winger who wasn't considered a big-game player after having managed 21 points in 45 career playoff games with the Winnipeg Jets. He scored the Cup-sealing empty-netter Sunday, capping an impressive postseason with 18 points in as many games.
The Hurricanes had over $10 million in cap space and a cupboard full of draft picks leading up to the 2026 deadline, making them primed for a splash, like the 2024-25 Panthers did by bringing in Seth Jones and Brad Marchand. Instead, Carolina only added depth forward Nic Deslauriers, who appeared in one playoff game.
Tulsky never deviated from the game plan, even if it went against the NHL norm. He knew he'd helped build a team that had always punched above its weight. He found speedy, pesky, and intelligent two-way players who may have been undervalued elsewhere but ended up being perfect fits under the brilliance of Brind'Amour's relentless, swarming system.
Captain Jordan Staal winning the Conn Smythe Trophy with just 12 points - the fewest by a forward since Dave Keon in 1967, when the postseason was only two rounds - is perhaps the greatest piece of evidence that Carolina was a team greater than the sum of its parts.
The 2025-26 Hurricanes proved that outside-the-box thinking should be encouraged, stereotypes are meant to be broken, and success doesn't have to look a certain way - valuable lessons in both hockey and life.
