Will run this top part for just a couple days, so just skip below the ——– if you have already seen it.
Thank you and request for help
First, I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who spent part of the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes hockey time at Canes and Coffee and a special thank you to the regular patrons of the Coffee Shop whose opinions, insight and friendly debate have become the best part of Canes and Coffee. Also, for those newer Canes fans who joined because of the contagious fun during the 2018-19 season, I am thrilled to see our Hurricanes hockey community growing again.
If you appreciated Canes and Coffee’s daily Canes coverage during the 2018-19 season, please consider a small ‘cup of coffee’ size contribution to help fund our operations. We run on a lean budget, but it still is not free to keep the site up. The hope is to do another round of required and possibly some extra maintenance during the off-season, so contributions are appreciated in either of two ways.
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Summer plans for Canes and Coffee
With the short gap (Hooray! Finally!!) between the end of the season and start of the off-season festivities including the draft, prospect camp and free agency, the tentative plan is to continue with daily Canes coverage through the front part of the summer and possibly take a short break during the back half of the summer.
In addition to the regular Daily Cup of Joe articles, the hope is to restart The Coffee Shop posts with reader polls and conversation questions most, if not all, Mondays starting next week.
Yesterday’s Daily Cup of Joe looked at carry forwards from the 2018-19 season and 2019 playoffs. Today’s Daily Cup of Joe continues on a somewhat similar path in considering upshots from the 2019 NHL Playoffs from various angles.
1) The core system and formula can work
When I consider everything from the playoffs and try to boil it down to the most important takeaways, one of the things that jumps to the top of the list is the effectiveness of the Hurricanes forecheck for giving good teams fits (at least at times) and also generating offense. I would argue that the Hurricanes lineup was a bit undermanned in terms of raw scoring talent. That situation was exacerbated by injuries, a struggling power play and the fact that the team’s top offensive players contributed but were never really dynamic or dominant. Yet through two series against good hockey teams, the Hurricanes were able to fuel a decent offense largely with what the forecheck could generate for possession time and scoring chances. The fact that Brind’Amour’s brand of hockey and system could be effectively offensively against good teams under the brightest of lights in the playoffs is encouraging.
2) But the lineup could use a bit more fire power
The other side of the coin from #1 is the fact that when the Bruins were able to defeat or at least neutralize the Hurricanes forecheck, there really was not much for offense behind it. As noted above, leading scorers Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen were right in the middle for me. Aho led the team in points, and Teravainen led the team in goals, so it is not at all that the duo was invisible. They definitely contributed to the team’s success. But at no point were they really dominant in such a way that they were going to carry the team to a win like Ovechkin/Backstrom did in a couple games and like Bergeron and company did as well. But more significant than Aho and Teravainen potentially having one higher gear in the playoffs in the future could be the fact that the Hurricanes are still 1-2 skilled scorers short lineup-wise. Especially after injuries kicked in, the Hurricanes seemed to be icing two fourth lines and also two top lines that maybe were also a player or two short offensively.
So it might sound odd, but I exited the playoffs both encouraged by the overall effectiveness of Brind’Amour’s system offensively lafter having some doubts entering the playoffs. But at the same time, I head into the off-season thinking that the Hurricanes really need 1-2 more difference-makers offensively to reach a higher level.
3) The blue line has become the strength envisioned a couple years back
Another thing that stood out from the playoffs was that the blue line has truly emerged as the strength it was hoped to become a few years back. By no means was the group perfect but at a physical level, they faced tough tests and were not overmatched physically or in terms of being able to match pace and handle pressure. A subtle but significant thing that jumped out at me during the playoffs was how well having a mobile blue line complemented the aggressive forechecking system. When the team was at its best, the forwards forced opponents to chuck pucks to random places to relieve pressure. Inside the offensive zone, the Hurricanes blue liners were on their toes and quick to pinch to keep pucks in the offensive zone. In the neutral zone, the blue liners had the courage to step up and take away space in the middle of the rink and were also quick to retrieve and quickly move pucks back into the offensive zone. And when teams did manage to defeat the forecheck, the blue line generally held its own defending in the defensive zone.
There are obviously many other factors to consider, but I think the foundation of this team as established by Rod Brind’Amour is a hard-charging forechecking style that is good enough to disrupt even good teams that know that it is coming coupled with a blue line that is solid from top to bottom and can similarly play a style that is on its toes and forward. Finally as noted in the middle, I do think the Hurricanes need to add another offensive difference-maker or two either externally or from another young player or two rising up to a high level.
What say you Canes fans?
1) If you had to boil the positives of the playoffs down into one to three things, what would they be?
2) From the playoffs, what one or two areas offer the greatest room for improvement going forward?
Go Canes!
I am just responding to (2)., but what stood out the most in the playoffs was our absolutely pathetic power play. And I think the comments you and breezy made to my comment in last night’s post says a lot. While we have the forechecking talent – our PP, which we need to be successful, needs more firepower even if it takes away from our 5×5 forecheck play. It is a tradeoff. But what did I hear, playoof success is contingent on the play of each team’s best players and special teams play, both. That was the Boston series.
I think our blue line was great because we never implemented the apparent plan of action trade one of our RHD. We carried 6 (nearly) top-4 D through the season. I am not sure that is a luxury we are afford going forward. RBA’s decision to not trust Fleury in the playoffs (he is shining in the Calder Cup) left us playing only 5 D. If RBA is only going to play 5 D, would the team have been better off icing 13F and 5D?
Your comment about 2 4th lines in the playoffs is a strong one as well.
The positives to me were somewhat obvious: we are fast; our forecheck, when it worked, was smothering; we had the bodies and the will to play very physical hockey. (I was actually quite surprised the BOS series wasn’t more physical.) All of those things can be part of a repeatable process that can continue into next season with the right personnel (that’s not going to be over-priced). Very encouraging.
To raleigh’s point, our special teams let us down in the playoffs and most obviously against BOS – we never really recovered from those two PP goals BOS scored to start the 3rd in Game #1.
It’s too early to start the real speculation on all the lineup manipulations that are going to occur, but the obvious needs are going to be a 50-ish point scorer – I’m not in the category of people that thinks we need a Duchene/Panarin type scorer – and goaltending; and as much as we liked out defense, we could use more depth there.
Almost all of our young players – Aho, TT, Foegele, Wallmark, Svetch – have more to give offensively, and some much more to give, and though we do have some scoring in CLT that might make the roster next year (Necas, Roy, Gauthier, Saarela, Kouk), I wouldn’t bet on that moving the needle much. There are going to be some interesting below-the-radar guys that fit into this bunch of jerks nicely that can keep things balanced.