Thursday’s 5-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche could rank as the most frustrating one for the Hurricanes this season. The volume of good things that the Hurricanes did especially offensively was easily great enough to win a hockey game, but some combination of a quick burst of catastrophic mistakes and a great game by opposing goalie Semyon Varlamov were enough to put the Hurricanes in the loser column on the night.
In many ways, the game was a mirror image of the Hurricanes win in Edmonton early in the season. Against Edmonton, the Hurricanes were outshot and outplayed by a wide margin but rode a strong night by Cam Ward and an uncanny knack for finishing the handful of grade A scoring chances gifted to them by Oiler breakdowns. On Thursday in Colorado, the reverse happened. The Hurricanes were the team winning the territorial battle and throwing a ton of shots at the net only to be victimized by a few costly mistakes.
Notes on the Carolina Hurricanes 5-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche
1) The fast and furious first and third periods
The Hurricanes outplayed the Avalanche by a wide margin in both the first and third periods but actually won neither period. A soft goal allowed by Ward to go with another made for a 2-2 first period, and the Semyon Varlamov show made for a 0-0 third period. In both periods, the Hurricanes had multiple players play well and saw multiple scoring chances generated.
2) The fateful second period
But the Hurricanes were undone by a short but impactful stretch of hockey in a bad way in the second period. In the span of about five minutes.
–Klas Dahlbeck was caught forward. The situation started harmlessly enough with Victor Rask rotating back to cover Dahlbeck’s place. But then Noah Hanifin accidentally tripped Rask to make it a 2-on-1, and then Hanifin just kept backing up before making a well-timed lunge toward a shooting lane which made for a wide open passing lane and a Colorado goal.
–Jaccob Slavin was beaten to the outside by such a wide margin that Rantanen was able to carve a quick path right back to the front of the net. No one else arrived to help soon enough and that too resulted in a goal.
–Coach Bill Peters decided to tempt fate and challenge an offsides call. The result was a penalty that led directly to another Avalanche goal when Slavin was slow to take away time and space which made for plenty of time for a pass to an Avs player breaking to the front of the net in front of Trevor van Riemsdyk.
–Along the way, Slavin and van Riemsdyk had another misadventure that was a near miss. Fleury also failed to take away the pass on a 2-on-1. And Hanifin had another ‘iffy’ play.
The implosion was short-lived but at the same time catastrophic. After playing a strong first period but not really being rewarded by the 2-2 score exiting the first period, the Hurricanes were suddenly down 5-2 in a game that they were winning in so many ways.
3) Hope for carry over offensively
One could nitpick the quality of the Hurricanes shots in total or possibly the lack of getting to the crease to create havoc while shooting, but in total the game was a strong one offensively. Perhaps a silver lining could be a carry over offensively. Victor Rask notched another goal beating Varlamov on a bad short side goal early in the game before Varlamov dialed in his game. Elias Lindholm also scored. Derek Ryan took of his invisibility cloak once separated from Jeff Skinner and had a strong second half of the game playing with Josh Jooris and Sebastian Aho. Aho is another who found a noticeably higher gear for the first time in awhile.
4) Grading the blue line
I go back and forth on whether the bad breakdowns were as numerous or as bad as they seemed or if they were just amplified by the fact that seemingly each and every one of them turned into a goal against. I guess that is a topic for Friday discussion. By no means was van Riemsdyk perfect, but he seemed serviceable in a top pairing slot. Surprisingly Jaccob Slavin’s play had a couple costly ‘oopses,’ and the rest of the blue line gets a similar rating that tries to somehow average out the fact that the players fared well in the open ice game but also had a couple tough miscues that played a huge role in the outcome of the game.
5) Results matter
The loss marks the third in a row for the Hurricanes and pushes the Hurricanes below .500 for the first time on the young season. Saturday’s game against the Arizona Coyotes now takes on greater importance.
Go Canes!
“One can nitpick the quality of the Hurricanes shots” bwhahaha.
Its not nitpicking when you the 59 shots at a goalie that arent legitimate scoring chances. The goalie (along with many other goalies over last season) looks great when he sees the puck the whole way, has a close shooter put it directly in his pads, and noone cleans up the juicy rebounds. Its so nitpicky that Lindholm had something to say about it as well in the post game.
The O looks good from a puck movement standpoint only. Most of the guys lack any ability to elevate a close shot or put a shot in a corner regularly. They don’t challenge the goalie on the shot.
We are one top 6 forward and one veteran defenseman away from getting out of this perennial funk. The reason we end up in this funk to begin with is because we are mashing together different lines with players whose skills are too equal (too many perimeter guys). Time to shake up this group. Our 4th line is conceivably our best, and why is that? It consists of mostly new faces whose skill set compliments one another.
Time to construct the top 9 forwards similarly. Send someone with talent out (good skating perimeter guy), get someone proven with skills we need in return (catalyst, net front presence). On defense, same deal.
1. No real offense designed for today’s hockey. We have 59 shots, virtually all from the perimeter. No one came close to the net to turn one or two of the 35 or so rebounds floating in or about the crease. Varmolov played that game from a rocking chair. Conclusion: No net presence we just continue to not score enough. Why: We are timid when it comes to contact. Coaches don’t assign that as a role for any players.
2. No power play. Can’t even get the puck up the ice and into the zone with any time left on the penalty. Colorado just skated in using speed. We tried our usual fancy dan 4 pass routine. Conclusion: Poor coaching and wrong players on the power play.
3. Solution: RF listen to dmilleravid and gocanes0506.
Giving a crap about this team is exhausting. Its honestly taking the fun out of the game I’ve loved since I was four years old. Peters isn’t getting it done. Roddy isn’t either. Cam was back to his disaster of a self, not sure why he got the start tonight when Peters said before it’d be Darling. Did you think he just had it tonight? Obviously you don’t know how to read your players. Aho finally looked halfway decent and set up a goal (and almost scored a couple), so he got put in timeout with Ryan and Jooris. Really? STOP PUTTING GOOD PLAYERS WITH THEM YOU IDIOT. I’m sick of watching this team underachieve. No one cares enough to bear down and get to the net and make a play. And the coach isn’t doing his job to motivate them to do so. Varlamov said after the game he wasn’t tired at all, and I’m not surprised. It was basically like taking extended warm up where everyone lines up along the blue line and lofts shots at the goalie to get him loose. That should be embarrassing. I am embarrassed as a fan. If anyone in the room gives a …. we better see an angry team in AZ. If we can’t win that one coming off this joke I will REALLY lose any remaining faith. Not that there’s much left.
So I have a couple observations after the game:
1. The goaltending has been frustratingly shaky so far, and seemingly for opposite reasons. Scott Darling has a lightning glove, but isn’t really a mobile goalie and is vulnerable to crosses. Cam Ward can make the mobile, sometimes acrobatic save, but always seems a second slow with the glove. How can we scientifically clone them into one?
2. I wholeheartedly agree with gocanes0506. It’s not nitpicking. We have one player who can consistently pick his spots. The rest sometimes just seem content to fire it on goal. And this strategy could work, except we lack one player of a certain skill set to pull it off. Forget all the ‘Top 6’ or ‘Top 9’ monikers. They’re essentially meaningless. To pull off the current strategy, we need exactly as gocanes said: The guy who cleans up the juicy rebounds. We need the big guy who can consistently get to the front of the net and turn those straight-on shots into deflections, and do so while playing at NHL speed. The Wayne Simmonds Type (side note: Matt called this like two years ago. Why didn’t you have RF’s # dude?)
So, since we’d never get Simmonds, we appear to have two options:
1. Call up Valentin Zykov.
2. Trade for a better version of Valentin Zykov.
All that being said, this is all just effort to make us more consistent. With the current makeup, we are still extremely likely to get very very hot at one or two times this season. If we can avoid this skid turning into a full-on losing streak, we’ll still be competitive. Go Canes
It’s time to stop the bleeding. Somehow. Someway. And now. So how do we do that? Who knows, but something has to be done, or we’re going to spiral down into the losing hole so deep, we won’t be able to climb back out. And we’ve all been at this critical juncture, too early in the season, for too many years now, and I know we’re all sick of it. And what’s frustrating to me, is that nothing significant ever seems to get done to remedy the problems we all know and hate. Lack of physicality. No net front presence. No solid goaltending (Darling has not impressed me at all so far). No true number 1C. No power play. No scoring. No veteran depth defenseman to rely on to actually play defense. Before this season, I, like a lot of Cane’s fans, had bought into this team, but deep down we all also knew there was still something missing. And those missing ingredients are rearing their very ugly heads right now. Which means we’re losing. So who to blame? The obvious target is to point at Bill Peters. And maybe he’s a legitimate target. This would actually be the easiest and quickest move to make. And I, for one, wouldn’t have a problem with a major shake-up right now, because if we lose to the Coyotes tomorrow night, the hole we’re spiraling into, will suddenly have no bottom.
It’s much easier/ quicker to talk about the good part of the game… IT’S OVER…………..
kind of reminds me of coed touch football…no contact allowed!
In case anyone missed it Cory Lavalette posted a solid article in the NSJ, supporting what commenters are saying here with additional stats and observations.
http://nsjonline.com/article/2017/11/on-the-hurricanes-scoring-peters-skinner-and-more/