Inside the Canes' New Practice Facility

It was almost a year ago when the Carolina Hurricanes
announced their partnership
with Wake Competition Center, the Morrisville multi-sports complex that would house the team's new practice facility.
As President and General Manager Don Waddell spoke, the state-of-the-art, twin-rink venue behind him was only an active construction site, a simple frame of a 115,000 square-foot facility.
"We're going to have everything we need here,"
Waddell said
. "We'll call this home."
And now, the Canes are home.

As the Canes are winding up for the yet-to-be-determined start of the 2020-21 regular season - the league has stated publicly that Jan. 1 remains the target date - the team has moved into their 12,000 square-feet of dedicated space,
which they helped customize and design
.

A small group of players - including Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, Vincent Trocheck, Jaccob Slavin and Jordan Staal, among them - have been skating almost daily on the red rink, which will serve as the team's official practice ice.

Adjacent to the red rink, which features around 1,000 bleacher seats (plus standing room options), is the Canes' home. Wall art and various design projects have been ongoing in the last few weeks, but the space is, for all intents and purposes, complete and fully operational.
The locker room features the same stalls found in the team's room at PNC Arena. The red and black version of the primary logo is backlit and suspended from the ceiling.

Medical and recovery rooms sport Canes' branding. And there's a sauna, too.

Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Bill Burniston has plenty of room for activities.

The lounge is a sprawling, open space with plenty of seating, a wall of televisions, a full kitchen and a ping pong table.

The importance of this premier venue cannot be understated. It's the long-awaited, much-needed, top-flight facility for the Canes. It's a carrot to dangle to potential free agent targets. It's the future home to state and national youth hockey tournaments. It's a flagship ice skating facility for the state and the region as a whole.
Now that the Canes are home, all that's left is to drop the puck.
"I think it's awesome. It's somewhere you look forward to coming to each day," Dougie Hamilton said over the summer. "You come to practice, and you want to be somewhere you enjoy being. It's obviously very nice. A lot of natural light in here. It will be fun for us to spend a lot of time here."