RALEIGH, N.C. — The total: 442 minutes, 1 second.

That’s how much ice time four Carolina Hurricanes rookie defensemen have totaled this season in 12 games heading into Thursday’s home matchup against the Minnesota Wild.

That total, an average of 36:50 per game, is the most by a contingent of Hurricanes rookie defensemen since 2020-21, when Jake Bean’s 42 games made up the bulk of the 630:09 blue-line minutes played for the team that year. You have to go back to 2015-16, when Jaccob Slavin, Noah Hanifin and Brett Pesce all played more than 1,200 minutes during the season, to find anything like this.

Needless to say, it isn’t what Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour had in mind when he started this season.

“We don’t really have pairings,” he said. “We’re kind of just mix and matching it. … We’re dealing with it.”

To say the rookies — Alexander Nikishin, Joel Nystrom, Charles Alexis Legault and Domenick Fensore — have outperformed expectations would be an understatement. That still doesn’t make it ideal.

“We’re throwing them in here a little earlier than we would like,” Brind’Amour admitted.

The Hurricanes entered the year committed to slowly helping Nikishin, the team’s longtime top prospect, adapt to the move to North America. The plan, as drawn up, was to play Nikishin in third-pairing minutes to start the year and slowly add responsibilities — penalty-killing, power play and, eventually, more five-on-five minutes.

The blueprint was going well. Shayne Gostisbehere, shifting to his off side on the right, played alongside Nikishin in the season’s first four games, with dominant results.

Being deployed in favorable situations, the pairing was atop the NHL in underlying numbers, with better than 65 percent Corsi For mark and an expected goals share approaching 80 percent.

The scoreboard results were similar. At five-on-five, Carolina was outscoring opponents 8-1 with Nikishin and Gostisbehere on the ice, and Gostisbehere was off to a red-hot start, with a goal and six assists in the season’s first four games. Nikishin, who played three playoff games last spring but was suiting up for the first regular-season games of his career, had points in each of his first four games. That included scoring his first career goal in a 4-1 win over Anaheim on Oct. 16.

Niki with his first, welcome to the NHL‼️ pic.twitter.com/9CbaIrkltk

— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) October 17, 2025

But attrition quickly became the name of the game for the Hurricanes’ defense.

Slavin totaled just 37 minutes in the first two games of the season before a lower-body injury that limited him in training camp and kept him out of the entire preseason slate flared up.

Again, not ideal, but Carolina had upgraded its depth by signing Mike Reilly to be its seventh defenseman this season ,and have a veteran capable of effectively playing middle-of-the-lineup minutes in just such a situation.

The parade to the infirmary, however, was just starting. Gostisbehere exited Carolina’s fifth game of the season, missed three games, and then lasted just over seven minutes in his return 10 days later before going on the shelf with a new injury.

K’Andre Miller, acquired during the offseason and pushed into major minutes when Slavin went down, made it six games before the ailment that limited him in the preseason — he, too, didn’t play in any exhibition games — sent him to the trainer’s room.

What started with easing Nikishin, the future of the team’s defense, into life as an NHLer became four rookie blueliners being thrown into the fire.

Legault, who impressed in training camp and was the final cut before the start of the season, was the first to return.

“You play the same system and that helps,” Legault said of coming from the AHL’s Chicago Wolves. “So when you come here, it’s not completely different stuff. You know where to be, and it’s just getting adjusted to the speed of the game.”

Legault, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound fifth-round pick in 2023, has long been familiar to the Hurricanes. He won an NCAA championship at Quinnipiac in 2023 as a teammate to Brind’Amour’s son Skyler. Just under three months later, the Hurricanes drafted him.

“I didn’t know Rod personally,” Legault said, “but I was really good friends with Skyler. … I hadn’t talked to them prior, so that was a bit of a surprise.”

Brind’Amour had seen enough of the rangy, physical defenseman to encourage the team to take a chance on him.

“That’s the reason we have him,” the elder Brind’Amour said of becoming familiar with Legault while following his son’s collegiate career. “But I think he’s just such a big guy that can skate that you hope the other stuff can come around, because this game, especially on the blue line, that’s a huge asset, being able to have that reach and being able to handle the heavy guys. That’s what hopefully he can kind of grow into.”

Legault is without a point in six games, but paired primarily with Reilly, he hasn’t been on the ice for a goal against in any situation while averaging 13 1/2 minutes per game.

The next man up was Nystrom, who had one of the more interesting NHL debuts by flying into Colorado just before puck drop on Oct. 23 in Colorado. Since he didn’t arrive in time for warmups, Nystrom took his customary rookie lap as the teams came on the ice for the start of the game.

“I didn’t have time to get that nervous,” said Nystrom, who was quickly recalled when Miller was hurt during the morning skate.

The 2021 seventh-round pick played more than 16 minutes that night and has averaged nearly 17 in his first six games, seeing time in all situations.

He joined Hurricanes lore when he was hit in the mouth against Vegas in his second career game but returned despite the gruesome gash that runs from above his chin through his lower lip.

“You guys didn’t get to see the actual injury, like how bad it was,” Brind’Amour said. “It filleted the whole chin and lip.

“That would be an easy one to say, ‘I’m good,’ especially how things were going. But he knew we were down all these guys, and he said, ‘No, I’ve got to get out there.’ I think that says a lot about the kid. So you’re talking about endearing (yourself) to the group, for sure.”

Fensore, who got into two games with Carolina at the end of last season, has also been up and played one game. Brind’Amour admitted he played Fensore over Reilly against Vegas on Oct. 28 to try to give the moribund power play a boost, but the Hurricanes ended up with just two seconds on the man advantage.

Meanwhile, Nikishin’s minutes continued to climb, from 16 1/2 minutes per night to nearly 22, including 27:33 in the Vegas game when Gostisbehere was injured and Nystrom took the puck to the face.

“Well, it’s necessity,” Brind’Amour said. “We’re missing the No. 1 guy there, so it’s pushing everybody up or in different spots. But he’s got that ability, too. Again, we’re probably asking a little much for a young kid. … We’ve got the need — might as well throw him in there now and see how he can adapt.”

And so it’s been for all of Carolina’s young defensemen, who have helped the Hurricanes not only keep their head above water during the deluge of injuries — forwards Eric Robinson and William Carrier and goalie Pyotr Kochetkov have all missed chunks of time as well — but start the season 8-4-0.

“I think they’ve done everything that we’ve asked them to do,” Brind’Amour said.

And the rookies are also getting valuable experience.

“It’s a reality check of how good you need to be,” Legault said, “and what you can work on.”