RALEIGH, N.C. – The Carolina Hurricanes announced on Monday that the team added four members to its scouting staff.
Mark Craig, Jeff Daniels and Ray Whitney joined the team’s professional scouting staff, while Don Elland was added to Carolina’s amateur scouting group.
It’s a move that executive vice president and general manager Ron Francis followed up on as per priorities he had set and made known back in July.
“Mark, Jeff and Ray will bring a fresh perspective to our pro scouting staff, and Don brings a wealth of experience in the OHL to our amateur staff,” Francis said.
With previous NHL scouting experience with the Philadelphia Flyers, Craig, 62, most recently served as general manager of the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Plymouth Whalers in 2014-15.
In the 1980s, Craig was the first coach Hurricanes majority owner Peter Karmanos Jr. hired as then-owner of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires.
Daniels, 47, was the head coach of the Hurricanes’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliates in Albany and Charlotte for the past seven seasons.
Prior to his time in the AHL, Daniels served as an assistant coach for the Hurricanes for four seasons, including the team’s Stanley Cup-winning 2005-06 season.
As a player, Daniels appeared in 425 NHL regular-season games, winning a Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 1992, and helping Carolina to the Stanley Cup Final in 2002.
Whitney, 43, begins his first post-playing career job in hockey as he joins the Hurricanes’ pro scouting staff on a part-time basis.
He announced his retirement as a player in January 2015 after playing 22 NHL seasons with eight teams.
Whitney played five seasons in Carolina from 2005-2006 until 2009-10, helping the team to the 2006 Stanley Cup championship and the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals.
He ranks fourth in Hurricanes history (since relocation) in assists (215) and power-play points (145), tied for fifth in power-play goals (38), and ranks sixth in goals (119) and points (334).
In 1,330 NHL games, Whitney scored 385 goals and earned 679 assists, and ranks 63rd on the NHL’s all-time scoring list with 1,064 points.
Elland, 51, joins Carolina’s amateur scouting staff after serving as head coach of the OHL’s Whalers during the 2014-15 season.
A long-time coach in Karmanos’ youth hockey program, Elland joined the Whalers’ coaching staff in 2010 as an assistant to now-Hurricanes assistant general manager Mike Vellucci.