In the midst of a 3-7-2 run starting in mid-February leading up to the trade deadline and the playoff stretch run, the Carolina Hurricanes’ 2017-18 season feels like a dumpster fire right now. Making a list of what’s broken seems much easier than building a list of foundations to be kept for the next attempt to push up and into the playoffs. And the volume of problems seems big enough, especially on the day of a Canes loss, that one could easily just wander from one problem to the next without any semblance of which are more important.
The better time to assess it all will be after the conclusion of the season and with some time to decompress and then try to digest and make sense of it all.
Nonetheless, today’s Daily Cup of Joe will make an early attempt to identify the biggest missteps that have the 2017-18 season teetering very close to collapse.
1) The decision to add Scott Darling
Francis made a concerted and targeted move to add Scott Darling to improve the team’s goaltending which was among he worst in the NHL in 2016-17. The move has not worked out (which is an understatement) and arguably is the single most influential factor in costing Francis his general manager job.
As detailed in my article on the Hurricanes goalie situation on January 23, the Hurricanes were the only team who really missed out of five teams who added starting netminders last summer. The debate on where the blame lies and how bad it is for Scott Darling’s 2017-18 play is fresh in the comments from yesterday’s Daily Cup of Joe that looks forward to the offseason and the 2018-19 season, so I will not rehash that. But regardless of where blame should go, if there Hurricanes were able to squeak just a couple games above .500 with Darling in net, the team would be tied with Columbus right now with the two teams sitting in the two wild card slots.
2) The decision not to add an offensive catalyst
When looking through high-level measurements to find weaknesses, the Hurricanes #27 ranking in goal scoring stands out like a sore thumb. Entering the offseason with a team that finished 21st in the NHL in scoring in 2016-17 and needing an upgrade scoring-wise, Francis added leadership and a great two-way veteran in Justin Williams and rebuilt the fourth line with light scoring veterans. Williams has been a positive, but arguably did not address the team’s most glaring weakness at forward, and the fourth line has since been mostly disassembled with Josh Jooris traded to Pittsburgh and Marcus Kruger toiling away in the AHL. Scoring continues to be a problem and just like goaltending will again enter the offseason as a top item to be addressed. The very first part of my long-running series last summer that aimed to build a playoff team very specifically called out the need for a top 6 forward capable of driving offense. In a combined fit of deja vu and painful irony, I will probably be able to use much of that article when I write similar in a couple months.
3) The failure of the blue line to materialize as a true strength
The potential for the Hurricanes blue line to be a strength that drives wins remains intact. But the key word is “potential.” That reality did not really materialize in 2017-18. Leaders Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce had somewhat similar seasons to 2016-17 but arguably took a small step backward with a tough stretch in the middle of the season. Further, the offensive part of their game has yet to catch up to their defensive play. Noah Hanifin made strides early in the year on the offensive side of the puck, but now at 229 games of NHL experience, he still rates as a third pairing defenseman with the potential to be a first or second pairing defenseman. And Justin Faulk who entered the 2016-17 season as arguably the team’s #1 defenseman has struggled more than he hasn’t for two full years. The defensive part of his game just has not been good enough in 2017-18 such I view him on a good team as being a solid offensive #5 defenseman but not an every game top 4. The group can go six deep with big, mobile, skating defensemen and has had its share of good games, but inconsistency and sub-par offensive production put the blue at average at best and still a ways away from being a catalyst for consistent winning hockey.
4) The choice to name dual captains and not Justin Williams
We will maybe never know the series of events from June through October that saw the Hurricanes go from being non-commital on naming a captain to suddenly saying they would name a captain to adding a potential captain to in the end not really making an actual decision on the captain. With the way Williams talked after his signing, he said the right things about doing what was needed but at the same time very much felt like a captain. In my article on July 9, IÂ thought that Williams would be named the captain and also offered my early claim that the team needed a ‘jolt’ of some kind. Did Francis sign him intending for him to be the captain, but then Peters chose otherwise? Was Williams’ tone just that of a leader and necessarily indicative of what he expected in terms of a formal leadership role? Was the intent all along just to have Williams to reinforce the leadership group? How did the brain trust arrive at the choice to not really make a choice and instead have two captains?
We will never know for certain, but there is some possibility that a different direction with this decision could have mattered.
5) The decision not to add more veteran coaching help
A less headline-ish thought on the whole situation is that I think that Bill Peters and the team in total could have greatly benefited from the addition of one more experienced person on the coaching staff. With a couple years at the helm of a team mostly rebuilding and not expected to win, the 2017-18 season represents the first for Bill Peters with the pressure and everything that comes with coaching a team that needed to make the playoffs. Shortly after the conclusion of the 2016-17 season on April 20, I put forward five predictions for the offseason (and actually went 4 out of 5 :-). My one miss was predicting that the Hurricanes would add another experienced coach with a specialist or similar title. My thinking was that Francis would recognize that 2017-18 was a different animal with the rebuilding over and time to win arriving and that he would offer, encourage or whatever else necessary to get Bill Peters to add one more experienced coach to his staff. Especially at times when the team seemed to get stuck in ruts, I wonder if having one more battle tested viewpoint could have made a difference.
What say you Caniacs?
1) Do agree with this list and its order?Â
2) What would you add or subtract?
Go Canes!
1) After last night, it is hard to argue that Darling isn’t a serious problem. However, I think if the underlying problem wasn’t there, then he may not have lost his confidence. Because I am becoming convinced that the biggest problem is the D.
The top contenders for the Veznia are Vasilevskly and Rinne. The D-men for TB have 37 goals. The D-men for Nashville have 46. (There was a goalie comparison tool on Money Puck last year, it appears they have taken it down, which had Rinne and Ward basically equal throughout their careers.)
Other goalies near the top of GAA and save% are Hutton, Grubauer, Raanta, and Bobrovsky. Their D-men have scored 38, 27, 35, and 43 goals respectively. Carolina is tied with Washington at 27.
My belief is this: the Canes’ defensive corps doesn’t pose a significant threat. So the opposition can be more aggressive forechecking and “cherry-picking” near the blueline. In effect, it is as if the Canes are playing 4 1/2-on-5 the entire game. So the goalie success rate is much closer to what would be expected from the penalty kill than for other teams. This explains the annual struggles. It is also addresses your point 2. Many have cited the Jones/Johansen trade as giving Nashville the catalyst they needed to become a top team. Yet Johansen has 45 points in 65 games. That is extremely close to what Justin Williams has this season. The big difference between Nashville and Carolina is blueline point production. Columbus is actually getting less offense from its forwards than Carolina.
2) So I would add–change the strategy, system, etc. to get more goals/points specifically out of Pesce and Slavin and to a lesser extend out of Hanifin and Faulk. Because, and this is the BIG point, if the other team is held accountable for being overly aggressive by giving up goals to the Carolina D, then the goalie will improve.
Can I retract my comments from yesterday’s post? Can I retract all my other comments, too? I think I’m going on a self-imposed moratorium on posting comments because I’ve been wrong about almost everything and it’s getting a little embarrassing.
I would add one more: building a defense-first 4th line has been a disaster. Not only was it not as good as previous year’s 4th line 5v5, but the players on that line often form the core of the PK and they weren’t very good at that either. And, they scored even less often than last year, something I didn’t think was even possible. Today’s NHL seems to require every line to be capable of generating offense. PDG-Rask/Ryan-Nordstrom just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Why does it seem that we control play, generate but fail to score on too many of our grade-A changes, and then watch the other team score on all theirs? Last night was a microcosm of the entire season. Very frustrating.
dmilleravid, you made my day. I have always read your comments and admired how reasoned and sensible they were. With the above request for retractions, I now know why I was so wrong so many times this year. The blame falls with you. Not me after all. You have made the 2017-18 season a success for me. I now know I was right all along in admitting how wrong I had been with my remarks.
Just kidding with you big guy. I share your thoughts above and I don’t think we are both wrong.
🙂
The first thing I would have done was not name Staal/Faulk co-captains. I say this because our biggest problem this year is team dynamic. Whether or not there were differences of opinion on the captaincy should have meant we not name one at all until all sides agreed. The second thing we should have done last summer after signing Darling would have been to bring in a veteran defenseman (replacing Hainsey). This would have slotted our defensemen more appropriately and not thrown Fleury/Dahlbeck into the fire as our 6/7. Our goalies have been hung out to dry equally as much as they have let in bad goals, and this is in part due to the above mentioned defense but likely also confidence in said team culture. We should have also traded one of our surplus of puck possession forwards along with a pick/prospect to land a scoring forward, even if that meant giving up something good to get. We obviously needed a proven scorer-first mentality on the ice, and the dynamic of the team needed to change to boot, but GMRF was too patient. We should have at least done this by Thanksgiving.
The net result could have been more scoring from the forward ranks to take pressure off the defense, and ultimately the goaltending. Proper leadership would have drilled home this message time and time again, breeding fire into what it takes rather than deer in headlight cliches. So yes, last night was a microcosm of the last few years.
I agree with live_free. The decision for co-captains was a travesty since the beginning. Not so much with the Jordan Staal selection, I will agree he’s more of a quiet leader, but we saw how important he was to the team, during his family crisis last month. Justin Faulk, on the other hand, has been a travesty, plain and simple.
It made sense to groom him as a leader. At only 26, he’s a three time All-Star and should have been the veteran heart of the D-corps. Instead, not only has he responded with his worst season ever, but he seems to be giving up on the team (or at least on several plays) in the middle of a playoff hunt.
This is absolutely unacceptable for a captain, to the point where I am far more lenient to the new guys we brought in, than a guy who knows the system, knows what we expected, and was expected to lead this group. He clearly hasn’t.
I think we can all agree that there are a lot of issues that plagued this team this year, but if it truly does all start with leadership, then Justin Faulk should bear a significant burden of the responsibility for the team’s play. He certainly hasn’t been leading by voice or example.
Captains are usually players that play the game the right way. An example of how you want the rest of the team to play. The Canes have been handing out letters over the past few years, it seems, as enticements for players to play better and fill that role. Jeff Skinner with a letter? The guy is a poster boy for not playing the game the right way. Faulk has had his poor defensive moments in the past, but they seem to be his regular game these days. Rewarded with a letter. For crying out loud, Rask had a letter last year! The only guy currently with a letter that should have one is Staal. The entire process has been messed up for a few years. Don’t know if that was Francis or Peters, but it has been horrible and an representation of this dysfunctional organization.
A lot of good ideas expressed above. None will amount to anything if we don’t start by removing Bill Peters.
To me its:
1. Faulk and the defense … all of the defense (except maybe TVR) has struggled at some point this season. Slavin and Pesce seem to have bounced back… but Faulk has lost it… so has Hanny. I just don’t see the love for Hannifan. I think he was in the Slavin,Pesce group and people thought he was ready ahead of time and would excel just like they did. I think it was too soon. Faulk has cost us many goals this year. It is sad. He made the statement at the beginning of the year “All I do is shoot…” at the time I thought that was good, but it is telling now.
Two Captains would be next…. especially the two they picked. I thought that Williams would not need a C because he would command respect anyway. I thought Skinny had put the time and effort in. I feel like he feels he was slighted. But Faulk and Jordan (who plays hard, but is not really the type of leader needed) were not the ones that should have been picked.
Darling, at the time, was looked at as a good thing. I believe that if the defense had not gone haywire at the beginning then Darling could have found a groove here. But because of the defense (not playing defense… and just as importantly, not scoring!!!!) Darlings mishaps were magnified and now it’s in his head.
Yes RF and BP have made questionable decisions, however, to me the biggest role in this has to be the players themselves!
Mike Futa, Assistant GM with the Kings, has withdrawn his name from consideration for our GM job… hmmm.
Now for the article. I completely agree, number one is the addition of Scott Darling. What I find confusing, after watching his play this season, is that he was ever even considered. My son played the goalie position from a young age, through Junior Hockey. So I’ve seen a LOT of goalie instruction, games, practices, etc. Not that that makes me an expert, but I’m not inexperienced either, in what makes a good goalie. And just watching Darling’s basic lack of fundamentals, confuses me as to why he was picked. Now, I didn’t see him play much last season, but did his goalie skills suddenly deteriorate that much over the summer? If so, I find that astonishing. So we have to assume that our scouts, Francis, our goalie coach, and whoever else was involved in the decision (Peters?), just didn’t see the blatant weaknesses in Darling’s game, that we’ve endured in nearly every start he’s had this year. Evidently so, as we have 3 more years of Darling’s contract staring us in the face. And what do we do with this mess now? Please, do NOT bring this goalie back again next season. You don’t solve a problem by ignoring the problem… although that appears to be another common issue with this franchise these days.
I would move #4 and 5 to #2 and 3 respectively. The co captaincy was an outright fail that I just don’t understand. And it should have been clear that the coachhing could do with a boost.
I think the problems with the team are largely systematic and coaching and captaincy are two areas that affect the system, to what extent is hard to say, but both had the potential to start changing what appears to be the overarching problem, broken culture and lack of competitiveness.
Why all 5 issues were not address last off-season is a mystery and cost RF his job.
I think BP can no longer be the coach of this team. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a bad coach, just that he’s lost this particular group of players and the fans. Someone else needs to step in and take over, an outside voice, an outside perspective.
This happens to a lot of coaches, even once with a lot of success.
Give the C to JW, and have a long talk with Faulk about what is happening.
We know he is capable of so much more, he has played fantastic at times during his career, it’s not like he can’t do it, but something, be it physical or mental , is, shall we say “bucking him up”, or something pretty close. If he can step back and take a short break, then come back and work out like mad over the summer, be relieved of the C responsibilities, I still hope he could come in and be the offensive catalyst we know he can be, and hopefully a bit better in his own zone.
Trading him now doesn’t make sense, his perceived value must be the lowest in his entire career, so a reclamation project is the way to go.
Carolina – where goaltenders go to die. Khudobin..Lack..now Darling? What is the common thread for 3 goalies who were outstanding before they arrived? The coach maybe? It is good to see that Khudobin is having a resurgent year with Boston. Lack had a rough go in Calgary but started looking better in NJ. Give him a year to regain the confidence that being a goalie in Carolina sucked out of him. I have every expectation that Darling can enjoy that same redemptive resurgence (and maybe even here with different coaching???). Darling will be successful.
I don’t necessarily buy into a defective blue line – rather defective play by both D-men and forwards in the defensive zone, while clearing or forechecking or trying to stop a rush (usually have sloppy play in the neutral zone). I think ct hit it – sometimes it seems we were playing a man down in those zones. Would a single experienced defensive stalwart have solved that problem – I really don’t think so.
We could have used more offense for sure – but there were nights when we were dominant. Why some nights and not others? Certainly more reliable scoring than our streaky goal scorers and more consistent depth scoring.
I am really not sure about the two captains thing as being an issue. Carolina has always had a leadership team approach – who was wearing a letter was less important. You can be sure JW was talking in the locker room and on the ice. And players were listening even if he wasn’t wearing a letter. I saw one very short clip on Twitter from a few weeks ago when things still looked promising and Staal handed the game star shirt(?) to Turbo – it was the second game after Staal’s return. At the very you got a chance to see a very engaged and energetic Staal having a good time in a leadership way. I was very impressed – one of the few legitimate glimpses I have seen into the Canes locker room.
Here is another hindsight thing that has already been mentioned – trading Faulk for RNH (which was rumored to be Oilers’ asking price for the forward) should have happened and could well have addressed both scoring woes and lapses in the defensive zone. Easy to see that now – and now it is too late given the season Faulk has had. But since we talking mis-steps let’s add that one in particular (or, as another indicated, trade defense for offense in a more general way).
I am concerned that Dundon will hang his hat on Peters; I am hopeful that a new GM will want his own coach.
Even without the playoffs an option, I would like to see the team run off some wins to close the season and wash out a bit of the cancer of losing so much this season. Turbo and Aho both deserve that in their young careers.
Raleightj, I find myself in total agreement with you. Again.
To all the others, I too consider it fun to speculate about what’s going on behind the scenes. But i have to remember that I am indulging in speculation.
As is usually the case, what seems to be is not.
I remember when Jimmy Rutherford picked up Doug Weight as well as Mark Recchi at the 2006 deadline. Both men commented that they agreed to come because after careful consideration they knew that the Canes were serious contenders, dedicated to winning. I would submit that no one sees us that way today. My D will likely be disappointed in his search for a GM. And both will be disappointed when trying to pick up players of elite calibre.
They might have to do it the way Mr. R had to do it. Pick carefully at the consignment store. Get those with something to prove. Offer a second or third chance. Overpay when necessary. Look at the Stanley Cup Champion Canes. From the coach to the goalie and d corps. The forwards. Many of them. And Mr R did it on a tight budget. With deep pockets, and the core players we have, the task won’t be as difficult. Or as long.
If Mr. D is willing to be acting GM for a while, relying on advice from Willie and Steve and Rod, before long we might see GM candidates lining up at the door.
Just my not-very-humble opinion.
“Get those with something to prove. ” – rhymes with VGK.