The Carolina Hurricanes 2017 NHL playoff hopes were officially extinguished on Tuesday night when the Ottawa Senators won and in the process eliminated the Canes.
Today’s Daily Cup of Joe looks back on the rough patches that ultimately doomed the season.
Another slow start
The delayed start to the 2016-17 season because of the World Cup meant that the Hurricanes started the season with the NC State Fair road trip. The norm is for the Hurricanes to quickly squeeze in 1-2 home games before departing. The Hurricanes dug an early hole with a 1-3-2 record in the first 6 on the road and the slump continued through to a 3-6-4 mark. If you prorate a 95-point pace over those same 13 games, the Canes were already 5 points off the pace only 13 games into the season. That kind of deficit is not insurmountable, but it is definitely not where anyone wants to be come mid-November. Without the World Cup next fall, the Hurricanes should get a home game or 2 before hitting the road which will hopefully spark a better start.
The gauntlet run in mid-January
In the second week of January, the Hurricanes reeled off 4 straight home wins and made up some ground in the standings in the process. For a brief moment, the Hurricanes were in the eighth and final playoff spot if you ranked teams by games above .500. Ironically, I think I called a top for the 2016-17 season when I wrote an article entitled, “Readying for the road – Are fun wins hiding a growing problem on defense?” The article shared my concerns about the team getting away from its defensive acumen despite the wins. Sure enough, the Hurricanes lost their next 5 straight more or less giving back everything that they had fought to make up over the previous weeks.
Hurricanes bye week blunder
The straw that broke the camel’s back was probably the run of games sandwiched around the bye week. By the time the Hurricanes went on their break, it was no secret that teams were struggling coming out of the bye week and getting back up to NHL speed. The Hurricanes were no different. After losing their last 2 games before the bye week, the Canes proceeded to lose coming out of the break too going 5 games without a win and collecting only a point in 5 games.
Inability to capitalize on short stretch against the NHL’s worst
While still sputtering from the slow stretch coming out of the bye week, the NHL schedule gifted the Hurricanes a run of 3 straight against the NHL’s 2 worst teams (Colorado and Arizona). The Hurricanes managed only 2 out of 6 points and in the process put the finally nails in the casket. The magical 13-game point streak that followed did everything possible to pry the casket back open, but hindsight now tells us that the season was already over.
Hurricanes road woes
My rough math says that to make the playoffs, a team must get two-thirds of the available points at home and half of the available points on the road. That yields a total 95 which is usually about where the cut line is (though it might be a couple points higher this season). If the Hurricanes win their final 2 home games, they will finish with 55 points at home which is right on target. But the Hurricanes 12-19-9 mark right now on the road is 7 points shy of the break even pace needed per my math. A deeper look at the Hurricanes road woes suggests that the problem dates back to earlier in the season. The Canes are actually 5-3-2 on the road since March 1 which is impressive. The problems date back to the front part of the season when the Hurricanes were unable to put things together defensively especially past the top pairing on defense. The recent improvement offers hope but does not eliminate the need to figure out how to garner more production away from home in 2017-18.
What say you Canes fans?
Did I miss any other stretches that doomed the 2016-17 season?
Which of these stretches was most damaging?
Go Canes!
I think you have covered it pretty well. I would just add that it appears this team as currently composed can only win consistently when it is playing at the very top of its game. Every team has a bad streak or two where they lose three or four in a row. Even the best do. In your article you point out four such streaks for the Canes. This was in a year when we had no major injuries. This inconsistency is the difference in being in the playoffs and not making it.
Which stretch was the worst? IMO it was the season opening streak. Starting the season as we did started us off immediately chasing the field. More importantly, it killed attendance for the year. It left the impression to the fans right away that this year was going to be more of the same as the prior six or seven years. If the fans felt this way, I imagine many of the players had the same thought which could have immediately caused them to have less confidence in being a winning hockey team capable of making the playoffs. Regardless of whether it affected any of the players, it made for a lousy year for the diehard fans who had to sit in a half empty arena for the season. I’m one of those diehard fans.
I think you captured the high-level stretches well. I would only add the most troubling issue that started early and only seemingly got resolved during the recent point-streak was our inability to hold a lead (especially multi-goal leads) in the second half of games.
It started the first game of the season in Winnipeg, then again reared its ugly head a few days later in Vancouver. We saw it in Boston, Anaheim, New York, and Philadelphia. I can count at least 8 points we left on the table by not closing out games where we had leads and were out-skating / out-playing our opponents that night.
While not a “stretch of play” where the season “got away from us,” it was a style of play that was a reflection of an immature team: and you knew then that those were the lost points that were going to come back to bite us, not the four losses in a row to CBJ, PIT, WAS, CBJ, all of whom were then playing their best hockey of the year.
Hopefully, the core of the team will all return next year with more experience and more hunger.
Very good point. I would put it in same category as the road struggles especially in the 1st half of the season. Would need to hunt down stats to compare Canes to other teams, but my hunch is that the Hurricanes gave up more points in the third period than the average.
A 7 win, 14 loss overtime and shootout record doesn’t help.
And this 1 I should have remembered/included. I was just talking to someone about this a couple days ago. Compared to average (50/50), the Canes left 3.5 points on the table.