from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer,

Andrei Svechnikov has cooled off after a hot start -- after six goals in the team’s first eight games, he has one empty-net goal in the past 11 -- and so have negotiations on a new contract for the young star, whose entry-level contract expires after the season.

Svechnikov’s agent, Todd Diamond, said that wasn’t a sign of an impasse, but that the fast pace of the shortened season hasn’t left much time for negotiating.

“Things are kind of status quo,” Diamond told The News & Observer. “There’s a time and place to have deeper talks. There’s just so many games right now, it’s not the right environment for it. It may take into the offseason.”...

“It’s easy, because he’s ours, we’re going to pay him fair and get it done,” Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon told the N&O. “That’s just when not if. We want to get it done. These are fairly easy deals to get done. The market, if you look at the bridge deals that have been done, it’s not that hard.”...

The Hurricanes also have to make a decision on defenseman Dougie Hamilton, who can become an unrestricted free agent in July, but that really doesn’t have to happen until the April 12 trade deadline. The 27-year-old is the Hurricanes’ highest-paid defenseman at $5.75 million per season....

And then there’s the sticky case of coach Rod Brind’Amour, who at $600,000 per season is one of the lowest-paid coaches in the league. In the big picture, this is an easy one: Brind’Amour has never expressed any desire to leave and Dundon is on the record saying Brind’Amour has earned a raise.

“I can’t imagine it not working out,” Brind’Amour told the N&O on Friday.

The details get a little trickier. Brind’Amour is under pressure from his peers in the NHL coaching community to get his salary closer to the league average. The 13 coaches with salaries listed on capfriendly.com average more than $3.2 million; the actual average is believed to be less than that. Calgary’s Geoff Ward is the lowest-paid on that list at $900,000. On top of that, the Hurricanes’ assistant coaches and support staff are all out of contract this summer, and it’s up to Brind’Amour to advocate for them.

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