Hurricanes’ Alexander Nikishin breaks silence on trade rumors, winning Stanley Cup

The Carolina Hurricanes continue their summer of celebration after winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 20 years, having defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in six games earlier this spring to ascend to the mountaintop after a two-decade wait.

But while the Hurricanes have most of their core pieces locked up to multi-year contracts, one matter of uncertainty has yet to be taken care of. Defenseman Alexander Nikishin, who suffered a concussion during their opening-round series win over the Senators, is in the midst of a contract stalemate after wrapping up his two-year entry-level contract that carried a $925,000 salary cap hit.

However, according to Nikishin, he’s in no hurry and is letting his agents handle things.

“My agents handle that. I don’t push the situation much, they take care of everything themselves,” Nikishin said via RG.org. “If something concrete comes up, they’ll call me. Right now there’s nothing concrete about the contract.”

He also noted the difficulty of his first experience in the postseason, saying every round was difficult.

“I wouldn’t say it was easy,” he said. “Actually, it was very hard. It just happened that we won the first series 4-0. Ottawa has a very strong team, we managed to turn the series around in overtime at some point. That was a very tough team. The same can be said about Montreal. Other teams played more games than we did, but no round was easy.”

He was originally selected with the 69th overall pick by the Hurricanes in the 2020 NHL Draft while he was with Spartak Moscow of the KHL. In 81 regular-season games, the Oryol, Russia native scored 11 goals with 22 assists. He also appeared in 17 postseason games, registering an assist and getting his name engraved on the Stanley Cup.

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