Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

For Hurricanes, new investors don’t mean big-money players

Peter Karmanos Jr.

The Carolina Hurricanes will get a much-needed injection of cash from 10 new investment partners, but don’t expect them to be big players in free agency.

“We’d like to have the flexibility budget-wise to go to the top (of the salary cap), if we think we need to,” owner Peter Karmanos Jr. told reporters at a press conference. “But we’re not going to just throw money at players to get to the top of the range.”

Some of the $22 million Karmanos has raised will surely go towards paying down the team’s debt. According to a 2010 Forbes report, the Hurricanes’ debt/value ratio (80%) is the third highest in the NHL. Now guess which two teams had the highest level of debt. Yep, the Dallas Stars and New Jersey Devils. One already went bankrupt, the other is reportedly on the verge.

So good on Karmanos for getting investors on board. Particularly local investors.

“I really think it’s important for a sports team to be owned by local people,” he said. “When the day comes that I’m going to get out of the business, we’ll have lots of people who have some direct experience who actually live here.”

The good people of Hartford must be so happy for the good people of Raleigh.