Before we go anywhere else with this review, let us begin by praising Jaccob Slavin, the Lady Byng of his generation (seriously, if we’re going to rename the Selke for Patrice Bergeron, the least we can do is rename the Byng for Slavin), for reining in his unhinged ways that saw him accumulate double-digit penalty minutes in 2021-22 and keep it to a much more reasonable eight PIMs in 2022-23: two delay of games, and two tripping penalties. Good job, Jaccob. Next year, try even harder.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it was another workmanlike year for the keystone of the Hurricanes’ defensive corps.