Hurricanes keep AHL depth in qualifying offers, part ways with four teammates

Carolina issued qualifying offers to seven restricted free agents, keeping Noel Gunler, Aleksi Heimosalmi, Viktor Neuchev, Cayden Primeau, Justin Robidas and Ronan Seeley in the system, with Alexander Nikishin already covered earlier. Skyler Brind’Amour, Domenick Fensore, Amir Miftakhov and Nikita Quapp did not get offers and moved to unrestricted free agency.

That split says more about Carolina’s AHL pipeline than a routine offseason filing. The qualifying-offer window runs from noon ET on July 1 through 5 p.m. ET on July 15, and the Hurricanes are using it to sort through which young players remain part of the next wave for Chicago and which ones are no longer in the organization’s plans. Three of the seven players who received offers, Gunler, Primeau and Seeley, are arbitration-eligible, which gives each side another layer of leverage before the summer market settles.

Primeau is the clearest name on the list for immediate AHL relevance. He finished Chicago’s 2026 postseason as the Wolves’ No. 1 goaltender, and his place in the depth chart matters because Carolina has long viewed its crease as an area where one injury or one hot stretch can quickly pull a goalie between Raleigh and the affiliate. Seeley is just as important in a different lane. The defender has already fought through a diagnosis that included an aortic aneurysm discovered in 2021, and his return to the system gives Carolina a young blueliner it can keep developing instead of shopping the market for emergency depth later.

Gunler, Heimosalmi, Neuchev and Robidas are the kind of players that can look ordinary on paper and still swing an AHL season. None is a finished product, but each can fill real minutes in Chicago while Carolina decides whether any of them are ready to become call-up options in Raleigh. That is the point of qualifying offers at this stage of the calendar: not just control, but time. A year ago, Carolina qualified five RFAs; this summer, it stretched that group to seven.

The affiliate backdrop makes the move even cleaner. Carolina and the Chicago Wolves signed a three-year affiliation agreement in May 2024, with Chicago beginning as the Hurricanes’ top development affiliate in 2024-25 and Carolina overseeing hockey operations decisions. The Wolves were independent in 2023-24, so this summer’s list is another sign that Carolina wants as many controllable pieces as possible feeding through Chicago instead of watching them drift onto the open market.