Without an AHL affiliate, the Carolina Hurricanes are losing prospects overseas

The Carolina Hurricanes entered the 2023-24 NHL season knowing they wouldn't have an AHL affiliate. Their previous affiliation agreement with the Chicago Wolves expired, leaving the Wolves without an NHL affiliate and the Hurricanes without an AHL affiliate.

Effectively, this is really bad news for both Carolina and their top prospects. The Hurricanes, of course, are one of the NHL's best teams and have one of the deepest prospect pools -- they also can't afford to throw a ton of kids into the lineup and hope it works out in their favor at the moment.

For the prospects, they make far less money playing in the ECHL, and they can't grow their game playing against significantly lesser competition.

Carolina Hurricanes' lack of AHL affiliate hurting franchise's deep prospect pool

2020 second-round pick Noel Gunler and 2019 third-round pick Anttoni Honka are the first two Hurricanes prospect to jump ship. Honka had just signed an entry-level contract with the Hurricanes last August and subsequently played his first season in North America with the Wolves. Now, his NHL aspirations have been put on hold.

Gunler -- who also has only one season's worth of AHL experience -- has already found a new home. The 22-year-old will be heading to Kärpät in Finland's Liiga on a loan from the Hurricanes. There, he will join fellow Carolina prospect Ville Koivunen, as well as other NHL prospects such as Kasper Bjorkqvist, Emil Pieniniemi, Niklas Kokko, and Visa Vedenpää. Gunler explicitly expressed his desire to improve as a player and felt that this loan would be a good enough challenge to do that.

It's also worth noting that the Hurricanes have assigned some of their prospects and depth pieces to the AHL affiliates of other NHL teams. Pyotr Kochetkov was loaned to the Tampa Bay Lightning's Syracuse Crunch, while Dylan Coghlan joined the St. Louis Blues' Springfield Thunderbirds, and Callahan Burke joined the Colorado Avalanche's Colorado Eagles. Burke has actually played for the Eagles since 2020, but everyone else is off to new pastures away from Carolina and Chicago.

It's unclear what the Hurricanes' plan is for their prospects going forward, but what is clear is that they didn't have a plan for the players they sent to the ECHL. It's disrespectful to the players who are certainly above that level of competition (and pay grade), and this strategy is not one that's conducive to the successful development of these prospects.