Excitement for Season Fuels Canes at Informal Skates

For over a month now, a group of players has been regularly skating and working out at the Carolina Hurricanes' new practice facility at Wake Competition Center.
With each passing week, that number grew with the hope of a season beginning anew.
On Sunday, plans were finalized for the 2020-21 season, a 56-game slate that will begin on Jan. 13.
That long-awaited news was an early holiday treat that provided a little extra boost in motivation and intensity on the ice, as familiar hockey sounds filled the red rink at WCC.

"With the mindset of the season being right around the corner, the competitive juices are flowing a little bit more," Jaccob Slavin said. "Guys are getting excited just to start playing again."
The Canes are now skating and working out with essentially a full complement of players. It's camp before camp.
"It's a lot easier to push yourself now knowing you actually have a time that you need to be ready for. Ever since I came back, though, the skates have been really good, and our pace is good," Jordan Martinook said. "It's definitely nice knowing you're not just skating to skate. You're skating to prepare for a season now."
"Workouts with Billy Burniston] have been awesome, but with no start date in place, it was kind of, 'OK, do we need to push it to the next phase yet?" Slavin said. "Now that we have a target date, we can get dialed in and get into season shape to make sure we're ready to go."
The Canes and the 23 other teams who participated in the league's Return to Play plan over the summer will formally open training camp on Sunday, Jan. 3.
The league drops the puck on a
[56-game regular season
just 10 days later.
GET TO KNOW THE CENTRAL DIVISION | HOW NEW DIVISIONS, SCHEDULE WILL WORK
It won't be completely unfamiliar territory for the Canes, who went from 0-60 in two weeks in July prior to games that really counted in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
This time around, the team figures to have around eight training camp practices on the calendar. In the absence of even just one exhibition game, battle drills and intrasquad scrimmages will have to serve as the best possible dress rehearsal substitute.
"Our training camp before the bubble was probably one of the best camps I've been a part of. Everybody was so upbeat. The energy was high, and the pace was awesome," Martinook said. "The first game in the bubble hit a lot of people by surprise because it was very intense, and you were going right into it. It will start very fast, I'm sure. Teams, us included, will want to start fast."
Starting fast is important each and every season. Teams will tell you they'd ideally like to be in a playoff position by Thanksgiving - it's a pretty reliable mathematical indicator of an eventual playoff berth, after all.
But, in a 56-game season that spans just about four months, there isn't ample runway to make up lost ground.
"Every game means that much more," Slavin said. "It's going to be intense. With no preseason games, we've got to be ready to go right away."
"It's going to be a big challenge," Jordan Staal said on a
Zoom call
. "Every game is going to be that much more heightened. Everyone has to be prepared right away. Our group has to jell quickly and find a way to get hot early and continue to stay hot."

The 2020-21 season is likely to resemble more of a sprint than the standard 82-game marathon. It will also be unique in the sense that the Canes will see seven opponents exclusively in the
newly formed Central Division
.
Put on pause are some of the rivalries developed within the Metropolitan Division over the last few seasons. Now, the Canes will square off against Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Florida, Nashville and Tampa Bay eight times apiece, teams they posted a 10-7-1 record against in the shortened 2019-20 season.
"It will be fun. Games are going to get pretty intense pretty quick after you play a team 2-3 times in a short period of time," Slavin said. "I'm looking forward to it."
The Central Division features the defending Stanley Cup champions and the 2019-20 Western Conference champions. There are three Western Conference teams, a pair of old Southeast Division foes and a couple of teams in the midst of a rebuild. The top four teams in the division will qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which begin in mid-May.
"It's teams we haven't played a ton, so that will make it different," Staal said. "It's weird we're going to play those same teams the whole year, which I think is going to maybe cause some quick rivalries and good games."
And it all begins in three weeks.
"I'm super excited. It's just going to be fun to get playing again. There's been a lot of time off," Slavin said. "We're all ready to get back on the ice."
Three weeks!
"Knowing in three weeks that we're going to be playing and getting going is super exciting," Martinook said. "Now it's about us going out and proving that we can be one of the top teams in our division and then take it into the playoffs."