Hurricanes forward Jussi Jokinen celebrates the game-tying 1-1 goal by Tuomo Ruutu, right, during an Oct. 8, 2010, between Carolina and the Minnesota Wild in Helsinki, Finland. The Hurricanes will return to Finland next season for two games against the Kraken in November. (Heikki Saukkomaa / AP Photo)

RALEIGH, N.C. — In 2010, the Hurricanes opened their season with a pair of wins. One went down as a home game and the other on the road, but neither was played in North America.

Carolina — featuring Finns Jussi Jokinen, Joni Pitkanen and Tuomo Ruutu — defeated the Wild twice in Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena, and in the stands was a 12-year-old hoping to one day make a career out of hockey.

Sebastian Aho has certainly done that, and in November he will lead the Hurricanes in two regular season games at the same arena — now called Veikkaus Arena — in front of fans desperate to catch a glimpse of one of their national hockey heroes.

“I’ve been dreaming about it for 10 years,” Aho told CarolinaHurricanes.com after the announcement. “When they announce the teams (for these games), you usually don’t see Carolina there, and you’re always like, ‘Bummer.’ But (this is) worth the wait.”

The Hurricanes will face the Seattle Kraken in the two NHL Global Series games, on Nov. 12 and Nov. 14, a little more than a month into the 2026-27 season. The league also announced that the Senators and Blackhawks will play a pair of games in Dusseldorf, Germany, in December.

Hurricanes introduce 3 minority owners

The value of the Hurricanes franchise has skyrocketed since Tom Dundon took over majority ownership of the team in 2018. More than eight years and soon-to-be eight consecutive trips to the postseason later, Carolina has gone from being worth more than $400 million to now being valued at $2.66 billion.

The team’s value, fueled in part by its success on the ice, has certainly paid off for Dundon, who is now in line to purchase the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers for reportedly more than $4 billion.

Not long after the Trail Blazers news, the Hurricanes announced that Dundon sold a 12.5% minority stake in the team to three investors, and they were introduced last Thursday: Brett Jefferson, Marc Grandisson and Bobby Farnham.

“I think Tom has thought about for a long time whether he wanted to bring in minority ownership or if there was a good time to do it,” Hurricanes CEO Brian Fork said at the introductory press conference. “And I think he was always looking for the right people, and if he found the right group of folks to come into the team, then that would be the right time … and (he) just decided that the time was right.”

Jefferson, founder of Hildene Capital Management, won a national lacrosse championship at Syracuse in 1988 and is also a minority owner of the Oshawa FireWolves of the National Lacrosse League, but he said hockey was his first love.

“I called Tom on my 60th birthday,” Jefferson said, “and I said, ‘I’d like to buy myself a birthday present. … I’d like to buy part of your team.’”

Grandisson is a retired Canadian executive who said buying a stake in the Hurricanes is “a commitment that will last for my family for years and years.”

“We love the team, we love the game, and that’s really what it’s all about,” he said.

The most interesting addition is Farnham, who played collegiately at Brown and then piled up penalty minutes in nine professional seasons, including playing 67 NHL games with the Penguins, Devils and Canadiens.

“If there’s a point that (I) can add incremental value on the hockey side, and I don’t know what that looks like yet, I would love to do so,” said Farnham.

Byron’s fandom goes back

Two-time Daytona 500 winner William Byron hasn’t jumped on the Hurricanes’ bandwagon.

“It was my dad and I coming to games when I was probably 6 years old,” the 28-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver said at last Thursday’s game.

That included attending Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final in 2006.

“We sat up, like, the very top row,” he said. “It was fun. That’s my earliest memory, and we have a couple pictures from that time.”

Byron has since gone from iRacing phenom to NASCAR star, totaling 16 Cup Series wins and a 2017 Xfinity Series championship. Last weekend’s race in Darlington, South Carolina, afforded Byron the chance to fit in a Hurricanes game, and he’s hoping to make more time, especially come the playoffs.

“We’ve been to probably a handful of playoff games,” Byron said. “So I hope to come back here in April and May and get to a few more.”