Quaff from Cup slakes Canes' parched coffers.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: SPORTS SECTION

What will help the most, hockey fans say, is if the Hurricanes can put a competitive team on the ice. But that, too, is questionable .... As of early September, the team's roster had stirred little excitement.

--BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, October 2005

Nine months later, of course, that Carolina Hurricanes roster had managed to stir up quite a bit of excitement, delivering the Stanley Cup to Raleigh in a Game 7 win over the Edmonton Oilers. Not only was it the state's first professional-sports championship, but the series enabled the Hurricanes finally to squeeze out a profit for Peter Karmanos, who bought the Hartford Whalers in 1994 and moved the National Hockey League franchise to North Carolina in 1997.

During the presentation of the Stanley Cup, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman praised Karmanos for seeing North Carolina's potential as a hockey market. That was evident after a game that featured a sellout crowd of nearly 19,000 fans--many of whom didn't know a cross-check from a canceled check 10 years ago--standing to cheer the entire contest. But many believe that what Karmanos, the chairman and CEO of Detroit-based software maker Compuware, really saw back then were visions of state and local incentives: $130 million that paid for the bulk of the construction of what is now the RBC Center, where the Hurricanes play home games. Karmanos, who had been unable to negotiate a deal in Hartford, chipped in about $28 million.

Still, the North Carolina years haven't been easy for him. The team, which played its first two seasons in Greensboro while the RBC Center was being built, says it lost $140 million through the 2003-04 season despite going to the Stanley Cup finals in 2002. It got a break with the labor lockout of 2004-05: It lost only $7.5 million by not playing.

The lockout also sowed the seeds of this championship season. A new labor agreement with the NHL Players Association ushered in a salary cap--$39 million last season--and revenue sharing for the Hurricanes and other teams in the league's smaller markets. Even so, Carolina cut its payroll from $34 million in 2003-04 to $27 million at the beginning of 2005-06.

But forcing the cap on the league helped spread the talent. Many teams had to trade or cut star players to get under it. Meanwhile, the cap left the Canes enough space to bring in midlevel free agents. General Manager Jim Rutherford, who may have been the real hero of the season, spent money wisely on relatively low-paid, speedy...