The playmaking winger has always been a bit of a rarity in the NHL. Wingers are usually paid to put the puck in the net, to the expense of almost anything else. But the Hurricanes have always had pretty consistent success with playmaking wingers, dating back to the days of Cory Stillman and Ray Whitney, and that lineage traces right through to the player who might be the prototypical playmaking winger in today’s NHL.
There aren’t many players anywhere in the league to whom you can compare Teuvo Teravainen’s impact on the Hurricanes. When Teravainen is out of the lineup, everyone else is thrown off kilter.