Inside Raleigh’s Efforts to Prepare for Hockey Glory

The first Hurricane warning came early to central North Carolina this year. The region’s only major men’s pro sports team was blowing through the regular season, headed for an NHL Eastern Conference-best 113 points. Another deep playoff run beckoned, perhaps even a return to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 20 years.

Sure enough, the Hurricanes stormed through the first two rounds. They went 8-0 against Ottawa and Philadelphia and were well on the way to dispatching Montreal in a five-game gentleman’s sweep when Scott Dupree got the call he had come to expect this time of year.

The NHL needed to make plans for the Cup Final. Most notably, it was time to start reserving hotel rooms, and that responsibility falls largely on Dupree and his team at Visit Raleigh.

“I don’t like to start those calls that early and jinx the Canes,” he said in his rolling Southern accent. “I know that sounds ridiculous but that’s sort of how I think.”

He needn’t have worried. The Canes did their part, and Dupree then did his, calling around to secure the 250 hotel rooms the league had requested, all at high-end places. The wrinkle was working around non-specific dates, because the Cup Final isn’t scheduled until the conference finals end. The league gave Dupree multiple scenarios and let his side figure out how to make it work. Ultimately, the Canes wrapped up the Canadiens series on May 29, three days after Vegas completed its own, stunning sweep of the Colorado Avalanche, setting up Game 1 of the Cup Final for June 2 in Raleigh.

‘Bling vs. Barbecue’

As a bet between the city’s respective mayors framed it, this would be bling vs. barbecue. Raleigh’s Janet Cowell and Las Vegas’s Shelley Berkley made a friendly wager in which some of North Carolina’s famed barbecue would head west if the Golden Knights won, while Berkley would give her counterpart a sequin-bedazzled Hurricanes jersey that would fit in nicely amid the neon lights of the Strip if Carolina lifts the Cup.

Other logistics were a little pricier. Tickets to games 1 and 2 at Raleigh’s Lenovo Center sold out in minutes, with upper-bowl seats topping $1,000 and some lower-level seats going for more than $3,000. The crowds weren’t limited to the inside of the building either, as the city hosted one of its two watch parties outside the arena and produced a concert for each of the first two games; Brothers Osborne did the honors the first night, and Dan + Shay did so two nights later.

In fact, entertainment support is, along with hotel supply, the other area the league leans on local leaders for the most, though the league in that case has its own division to assist with those matters.

All of it is worth it, of course. Two decades ago, when Carolina won its first and only Cup just 10 years after relocating from Hartford, the city found that the economic impact was $5.5 million thanks in part to 14,000 hotel room nights. This year, Dupree expects a conservative estimate of $10 million–$20 million and 15,000–20,000 room nights.

“In 2006 it also felt like an unbelievable ride and felt bigger than life,” he said. “This is similar because now the city is electric, banners going up all over the place, merchandise is flying off the shelves, ticket prices are through the roof. The one difference is now in the world of social media you’re just overwhelmed by it all. But we’d welcome it every year.”

That sentiment stands even though this is perhaps the busiest time of year for the city. At the same time Dupree was fielding calls from the league for hotels for VIPs, it was also hosting events such as the the NCAA Division II World Series, The Soccer Tournament event in nearby Cary, the UNC Health Championship that is part of golf’s Korn Ferry tour, and four high school baseball state championships.

Each event is significant, but this year the city was finally able to welcome back the NHL’s crown jewel event after watching the Hurricanes fall short in the conference finals three times in the previous seven seasons.

Unifying the Triangle

Now that the logistics are settled — the city’s plans won’t need to change much even as the Final returns to Raleigh for Game 5 on Thursday and possibly Game 7 on June 17 — Dupree and his staff can put more energy into rooting for Canes. He managed to find time to make it to Game 1 thanks to a credential from the NHL. Leaving nothing to chance, he wore the same Stadium Series jacket he got when Raleigh hosted one of the NHL’s outdoor games in 2023 and that had proven to be something of a good luck charm. Alas, neither the jacket nor the team came through as hoped, and yet despite the loss to Vegas, the start of the Cup Final was a moment for Dupree to take stock of what the city can do for the team, and what the team has done for the city.

“Everybody loves it, everybody’s on board,” he said. “This is the team that unifies the Triangle. In the sports world everybody is rooting against everybody else; when N.C. State does well, Duke and North Carolina fans don’t like it, and when one of those teams does well, the other teams don’t like it. It’s always these interfamily wars amongst ourselves. The Hurricanes are the unifying entity that brings the Triangle together.”

There may yet be one more piece of civic responsibility this hockey season. After a 5-3 win in Game 4 in Las Vegas leveled the series at two wins apiece, two more wins by the Hurricanes would mean a championship parade in Raleigh. This time it promises to be a far bigger one than that of two decades ago, befitting the growth of a city that has nearly doubled in size to more than 500,000 in that time and has the bustling, parade-ready downtown to prove it.

“I have seen one email so far about a parade that came from the Downtown Raleigh Alliance and they were just getting it out there that we need to start talking and thinking along those lines,” Dupree said before Game 1. “To my knowledge not a lot has been done with it yet but the thinking and planning is underway but in a very low-key way.

“I can say with confidence there would be one large parade downtown within 48 hours of the game. And I preface this by saying ‘if, if if’ the Canes win.”