Hurricanes’ Run Forces the Rest of the NHL to Chase Harder

Carolina is celebrating while the rest of the league is already rewriting its offseason plan, which is usually how a team announces itself as the problem. A successful run changes how rivals build, because nobody wants to keep running into the same structure and hoping for a different result. That pushes contenders to chase upgrades, patch weaknesses, and maybe talk themselves into one more aggressive swing than they planned on last month.