In the regular season, anyway. One of the problems with Ehlers is that he hasn’t been a consistent playoff performer, which makes some sense given his size and being a bit of a perimeter rush threat. To his credit, Ehlers was much stronger during the 2025 playoffs, but it’ll take a lot more than that to prove his doubters wrong.

The Carolina Hurricanes signed forward Nikolaj Ehlers on Thursday to a six-year, $51 million contract with an average annual value of $8.5 million through the 2030-31 season.