Carolina Hurricanes reach 8-year, $62M deal with Andrei Svechnikov

The Carolina Hurricanes agreed to a $ 62 million, eight-year contract with forward Andrei Svechnikov that will keep the No. 2 franchise of the entire 2018 draft pick through the 2028-29 season.
The team said Thursday the deal would pay Svechnikov, age 21, an average annual value of $ 7.75 million per season.
“Actually, it’s an easy decision for me,” Svechnikov said Thursday. “Eight years to play for Carolina and I want to be a hurricane.”
Svechnikov, 1.80m tall, 195lbs, was a fixture and physical presence on Carolina’s top line alongside Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen. He played all three of his NHL seasons with Rod Brind’Amour, a former captain of the team that won the Jack Adams Award for NHL Coach of the Year last season.

Svechnikov was a restricted free agent and the team had had outreach talks with him for a long time, although president and CEO Don Waddell had promised the possibility of a short-term “bridge” deal to ensure something was done when make a long-term agreement. achieved is not possible is achieved.
Waddell said Thursday that the two teams eventually suspended talks until after the season and then resumed with the shared goal of reaching a long-term agreement.
“Anytime it comes down to a contract, I think the sooner I get it done, the better for everyone,” Waddell said, noting that the team should start prep camp on Sept. 22.

“I didn’t want this postponement to training camp, and neither did Andrei, so we worked pretty hard on it, especially over the last week, to close it and close this deal.”

Svechnikov was an important part of Carolina’s resurgence after a nine-year playoff drought in 2019. The team reached the Eastern Conference finals in its rookie season that year and has won at least one postseason series in every one of the last two years.
He scored 15 goals and 27 assists in 55 regular-season games last season when the Hurricanes won a divisional championship for the first time in 15 years. Svechnikov also scored two goals and six assists in eleven playoff games, with Carolina defeating Nashville in the first round before losing to eventual Stanley Cup winners Tampa Bay.

Last year, after the NHL rebooted amid the COVID19 pandemic, Svechnikov scored the first postseason hat-trick in franchise history against the New York Rangers in a Stanley Cup qualifying series at Toronto Bubble.
And he had shown sure instinct with his lacrosse-style goals when he scooped up the puck with his stick behind the net and rammed it into the net behind the goalie.

“I see Andrei in and around the court every day, he is a player who invests his time,” Waddell said. “I went there an hour, two hours after training and he went back to target practice. You know he’s all in … He has shown a lot throughout his career. “