Storm Advisory 1/24/20: NHL News, Links and Daily Roundup

The 2020 NHL All-Star weekend kicks off tonight in St. Louis. The Hurricanes will be represented, no doubt admirably, by defenseman Jaccob Slavin, skating in relief of injured teammate Dougie Hamilton. Slavin will participate in the shooting accuracy competition tonight. He joined Michael Smith and Mike Maniscalco earlier in the week on the Canes Cast podcast, and yesterday he took the stage at All Star Media Day.

Brett will be along later today with a full rundown of tonight’s events, which begin with the Skills competition at 8:00 pm ET on NBCSN in the U.S. and on Sportsnet, CBC and TVA Sports in Canada .

News Roundup

• Yesterday’s News Today: We recapped the continued ridiculousness that is the Metro division race, and handed out mid-season grades for the Hurricanes defense.
• Also, yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of one of the most important dates in Hurricanes franchise history. Mark Armstrong takes a look back at a legendary tenure that began back on Jan. 23, 2000. [WRAL]

• And how did our bench boss celebrate his anniversary? While most of his players were basking in the sun in various tropical locations (according to their Instagrams), Brind’Amour headed in a different direction for some family time (you’ll notice a familiar name on the roster).

• Letters! Dougie gets letters!

• Speaking of Dougie, here’s what the stats say about what his loss might mean to the Canes down the stretch. [The Athletic $]
• And he makes a well-deserved appearance (along with Jaccob Slavin) in the PHWA’s 2019-20 Midseason Awards. [PHWA]
• But wait there’s more! He’s also on TSN’s list of Top 50 Players at mid-season (along with three of his teammates). [TSN.ca]
• First it was Tripp Tracy getting all the style tips from Petr Mrazek, now Mike Maniscalco gets a fashion makeover courtesy of Brett Pesce. [extended version here]

• Earlier in the week The Athletic published results of a poll that gathered NHL player opinions on a variety of questions of league-wide appeal. Twelve Hurricanes players participated. Here’s what they had to say when the questions took a turn and they were asked to rat out their own teammates, [The Athletic $]
• Canes PA announcer Wade Minter has a unique way for you to get your hands on some one-of-a-kind memorabilia and also help a worthy cause. He’s giving away four signed goal call sheets from Tuesday’s win against Winnipeg to anyone who makes a donation to the Canes Foundation by 5:00 p.m. today. Find details on how to participate in this twitter thread.
• Finally, let’s pour one out for the end of an era. On Tuesday Mike Flanagan and Derek Roessler of Section 328 stepped away from the mics after a six-year run of their wildly popular Cheaters Never Win podcast (they wrote about it here and here and you can listen to their final podcast episode here). While they intend to close their website in the near future, they’ll still be defending their cornhole championship title in the East lot, and their leather-lunged voices will still be the loudest in the arena, especially when the opposing goalie is on their end of the ice. The public voices of the crew at Section 328 helped to lift this fan base up during the lean times, and on countless occasions they also lent time and energy to give back to the community in deep and meaningful ways. Here’s wishing them all the best for what is next to come. Respect the underscore.