For those who are tracking the Carolina Hurricanes early in the 2018-19 season, it is no surprise that the team has struggled on special teams early on.
Today’s Daily Cup of Joe takes a look at both the magnitude of those struggles and also their effect on the results so far.
How bad is it?
The situation is literally and without exaggeration as bad as it can get. After another minus day for special teams on Saturday, the Carolina Hurricanes woke up on Sunday dead last at 31st in terms of penalty killing proficiency and also dead last at 31st in terms of power play productivity. Not surprisingly, the Hurricanes special teams goal differential of minus 8 is also the worst in the league.
But it will improve. Right?
Many suggest that the potential is there to improve both special teams units units and put this in the past. No doubt, special teams problems are something that can be rectified with coaching or just better play. But at the end of the day, one team is going to finish 31st in the league, so there are no guarantees that this will change. Rather, the coaching staff and/or the players must find a way to effect a change.
How much difference does it make?
One question that comes up is how and to what degree special teams troubles manifest themselves in game results. If one goes back through the Hurricanes eight games thus far and eliminates all special teams scoring, the Hurricanes would have pushed two losses into overtime and also had another overtime game still hanging in the balance. So if you count an overtime game as a half of a point (basically assuming Canes have 50/50 chance of winning in overtime), the team nets a certain 2 points and another 1.5 from three undecided overtime games. Three and a half points in only eight total games is a massive amount that prorates to a huge 35 points over the full season. That obviously is more than enough to be a difference in the standings.
How are the Hurricanes aside from special teams?
So with special teams dragging everything down so significantly, the question is how the Hurricanes have fared at even strength so far in 2018-19. The results are almost the exact opposite. At even strength, the Hurricanes rank a respectable 8th out of 31 teams in terms of goals allowed per game and an even better 3rd in terms of even strength goals scored per game. When you put the two together the Hurricanes are the tied for 2nd in the entire NHL In terms of even strength goal differential at an impressive plus 9. At a summary level, the Hurricanes are scoring three and allowing only two at even strength each game but are giving away the full plus one to the special teams deficit.
What’s next?
After three days off to make adjustments for Saturday’s game, the results were the same (minus one) and the eye test similarly did not suggest better results were imminent. The Hurricanes are back on the horse in Detroit on Monday but after that will have another three days at home to practice special teams before the next game. The time is now to figure something out before things drift too far in the wrong direction.
Saturday’s post-game interview with Head Coach Rod Brind’Amour primarily struck a tone of patience and not panic. On the one hand, a bit of steadiness might be right for the young roster especially considering the overall results are decent. But at the same time, the ‘things will get better if we just stick to it’ tone hearkens back to Canes struggles in the recent past. (Did anyone else find themselves having flashbacks and curling up into the fetal position watching that interview?)
If he is not there, I would think that Brind’Amour should be close to shifting a couple players around. If I was head coach, I would to simple first. I would stress a bias for shooting when possible and couple that with making sure players like Valentin Zykov are parked in front of the goalie when that happens. In addition, I would consider making adjustments to try to get more shots from the team’s best scorers.
What say you Canes fans?
1) Did you realize that things were as bad as they are (31st in both power play and penalty kill)?
2) What do you see as the biggest problem with the power play? If you were the coach, what changes would you make?
3) What do you see as the biggest problem with the penalty kill? If you were the coach what changes would you make?
Go Canes!
1). Yes. It has been in plain sight.
2) Puck movement. Put Svechnikov on the first unit. Get Slavin off the second unit. Try Wallmark because he can bring the Checkers’ mentality, which obviously works on the power pay; he is also an excellent seam passer. Read this article!
https://section328.com/leverett-clarke/royal-road-canes-special-teams/
It appears that RBA is not much more thoughtful than most fans. He seemed to buy into the mantra “get someone in front of the net (except for the strange absence of Zykov). That is not the biggest success factor for the power play. Until the Canes start playing better hockey–not more physical, not grittier, but more tactically sound–the results won’t improve.
I watched the first two periods of the Tampa/Chicago game last night. Tampa has small fast players(Point, Gourde, Johnson, Cirelli) that use open spaces in the ice to beat you, they aren’t big on net-front presence. Their power play and penalty kill have been excellent so far this season. If you still don’t believe this, go to Hockeyviz and look at the power play heat charts for Toronto and Tampa.
Last season Slavin was the least productive player on the power play (for players getting substantial time), he was less than half as productive on the next lowest producer who happened to be Skinner. I know that RBA has expressed his desire to see Slavin receive more recognition and I understand that to garner Norris votes a D-man needs points, but Slavin is not helping in one of the most important areas. The Canes should have Faulk on one unit and Hamilton on another. Both units should have four forwards. I prefer:
Aho/Teravainen/Zykov/Svechnikov/Faulk
Staal/Williams/Wallmark/Ferland/Hamilton
3) The penalty kill is not as easy to fix. Some of it is randomness–Slavin getting a stick on the puck only to have it redirect past the goalie; de Haan whiffing on a clear only to have the puck go directly to an opponent; Blake Wheeler being the game’s best passer finding Laine the games best shooter–that won’t happen every game. I am slightly more comfortable, though I would be trying some new tactics, with patient on the penalty kill.
Good points. If you are interested in a bit more of the “royal road” stuff, you should follow Steve Valiquette. This is his analytics company. https://www.csahockey.com/ Most of what they do is proprietary, but they do rank players and teams in a different way using their statistics that they gather on their own watching replays. They do not use the stats you see at the rink or on other websites. Nothing up for this season yet, but if you look through their last season info you can see that the Canes gave up mid to high percentage shots at a very high percentage. You can also see that Scott Darling was easily the worst goalie in the league last year.
I agree that Slavin is not much of an offensive player. He just doesn’t think the game like that. He is the Canes best puck mover and part of the problem the Canes have on the PP is even getting set up in the zone. Not really sure who they have that would be better at the point. I’m not familiar with their forwards that may have experience doing that. TT was on a point on Saturday. That’s just begging for a shortie.
I do disagree about the PK. The PK isn’t that difficult. It’s about want to and being smart. I agree the forwards have been too aggressive up top on the PK. They need to be smarter in the D zone and worry about keeping their sticks in passing lanes. You only chase the puck if you know you can get it. IMO this should be much easier to fix as the Canes have the personnel to do it. On the PP the Canes are lacking in a top flight shooter and a lefty to run the point, which is something they are going to have to overcome.
Not sure how much Brind’Amour has been involved on the special teams, but I’m sure he is now. Not sure he has a lot of help there on the bench.
CT and LTS, no those shooting statistics look insightful. The have causation instead of just correlation.
While canes are supposed to have one of the best statistics teams in sports, the guiding lights of useful statistics are not shining on our power play. “Standing around the perimeter” is exactly the opposite of getting pucks, bodies, and bodies with pucks across the slot or “royal road”.
That is what is missing on our power play – we may literally be better off to play lithe the PP like a disciplined 5v5.
The “curse of the backup goalie” (opponent) at Carolina is because we play differently with a backup goalie. We think if just throw everything at the net it might go in. That strategy never works against good teams and seldom works against middling teams, even when they play a backup goalie.
When JW says play the same way all the time, it is because bodies and pucks in the slot together are high quality scoring chances, against all teams. To win consistently, play that way all the time.
And to kill penalties… prevent other teams from getting bodies and pucks in the slot together.
I can just see the opponents coach laughing on the bench when we stand around the outside and pass the puck around… “Hey look, they are killing their own PP!”
As bad as it seemed your analysis and summary paint an uglier picture than I thought. The PP seems to find chances, but shooters aren’t finding the holes left by goalies. The total opposite occurs on our PK. Against Tampa, Winnipeg and Colorado the higher skill level at the top of their lineup seemed to be our problem, as much as execution on defense. Those teams best players exploited every opportunity on the PP, we again did the opposite. Goaltending matters as well, while not totally the Achilles tendon, there is substantial room between league average and our tenders that will need to be closed to get the team out of 31st in the league.
Yes; it is very obvious how bad the special teams are this year.
The PP doesn’t move enough and the PK moves too much.
CT already pointed out the issues on the PP and I would also highly recommend the section 328 article as well. One thought I have had on personnel that I would be curious on your opinions of would be having Aho QB from the point with Faulk on the left half wall and Svech on the right. Aho and Svech are both great playmakers and that would give us two hard one-timers from both sides. If the other team cheats to take away those passing lanes then Aho can skate it in for an opportunity. Put Turbo in the high slot and park Zykov in front of the net.
I think the PK has had a few unlucky plays go against them but overall I feel like they have been too aggressive. Our bread and butter on 5v5 has been to hound the puck and outwork our opponent; on the PK there is a time and a place to attack the puck and others where it’s better to pressure but make sure you’re sealing off passing lanes. It only takes one person being too aggressive to get the whole unit out of position and scrambling to recover. I think Laine’s PP goal is a good example of this. Martinook and McGinn both made aggressive plays and were scrambling; TVR was on the short side with both Scheifele and Connor forcing Pesce to stay near the crease leaving Laine wide open at the face-off dot. Easy pass from Wheeler across the ‘Royal Road’ for a one-timer goal. Pesce and Mrazek responded as well as they could but it didn’t matter.
I think you would want Svechnikov on the left, his off side, so he would have better shooting opportunities, ala Ovi. TT is far too soft to be in the high slot, IMO. Players get bumped around a lot up there.
It appears that everyone knows that Faulk is going to shoot, so they load up in front of him. Theoretically, if Svechnikov was on Faulk’s left teams would have to respect both of their shots.
Ovi is a righty playing on the left; same as I’m suggesting for Faulk. Svech would be just the opposite, lefty playing on the right. Unless I’m misunderstanding you…
I agree with TT; my preference would be for Ferland to be in the high slot with Zykov down low but was trying to balance the units somewhat. At this point I actually think it may be better to stack the top unit.
We don’t have anyone doing a good job of QBing the PP which is why I thought put Aho on the point.
My bad…I had confused Svetchnikov as a righty.
I knew we were last in PP – I didn’t know we were last in PK although I assumed bottom 5.
And it isn’t just that we are last, our numbers are abysmal – particularly the power play. Can we just take a page from football and start declining penalties???
A couple of things I have noticed – since Zykov has been on the PP he has not been truly net front most of the time; he spends a lot of time playing to the side on the goal line. The goalie has far too much visibility on the puck as it gets moved around the perimeter.
Two years ago the PK was very successful (ranking first until the trade deadline, as I recall). One of it’s hallmarks was the difficulty we created in allowing entry – typically an aggressive Stalberg at the point and the others stacked in the neutral zone. Our PK this year is a sieve in the neutral zone compared to that.
As an aside, this is the type of issues/failings I was expecting from RBA as a coach. The challenge is on him to figure it out.
I met Dundon yesterday at “Meet the Canes”. In making small talk with him while he was signing autographs for my daughter and me I told him I liked the product on ice. He said in a somewhat dismissive way, “it is better”, but from his tone I got the sense he is not pleased. He was very civil and cordial otherwise. I was too surprised to think about getting a selfie! LOL!
I watched the Canes practice the power play at the open practice Sunday. It followed a predictable pattern over and over again. Any opposing team that would look at a film of our games would easily pick up on the pattern (if I could I am sure they could). There does not appear to be any room for creativity on the power play. Just the same pattern type passing and movement (not much of it). First to the man on the wall. He move diagonally toward the goal and throws it back to the near point. The point man fakes a shot and passes to the man on the far wall who passes it back. The point man passes it to the man on the close wall who again skates toward the goalie fake possibly shooting (which the goalie and everyone on the opposing team ignores) and tries to rifle the puck across the center of the ice to the man on the far wall. This routine goes on until finally, if we still have the puck) someone out of apparent frustration just shoots the puck. No positional advantage was obtained before the shot was taken IMO. Where is the Aho, Teravainen, etc. type movement and careativity that causes confusion to the defense?
Thanks for the practice info Red… Always nice to have. Is it possible that is a specific play there were working on? Could that have been the reason for the repetition… I certainly hope so!
All this hand wringing has me really worried. The team is not quite done with 1/10 of the season and they rank last in special teams. Both of them as a matter of fact. Perhaps the team should fire RBA and trade Aho, TT and the whole 1st PP unit. PK is easy so the team can get anyone to do that. Paging Kruger, Jooris and Nordstrom please report to Raleigh.
In all this statistical analysis I checked on another stat. Anyone want guess who has the most points in the Metropolitan? It may take a deep dive of analytical analysis to find the answer. That’s right the Hurricanes have the most points in the Metropolitan.
I got it the special teams are struggling through eight games. The team has lost three in a row and yet the Hurricanes have the most points in their division. Please respond with the voluminous shouts of they have played more games. True, yet there is no guarantee the teams behind them will take points in every game.
I think most reasonable fans knew this would be a young team and inherent growing pains. Part of the growth needs to be special teams. Now some here may think RBA has the same hockey knowledge as a casual fan but I am confident he has a few ideas to help the team get better.
Hang in there, the team wears the third jersey tonight. Anyone want to complain about how ugly they are or how they are contrary to traditional whites or Dundon is too cheap to whatever?
Hahaha…Ok, man. Some of us enjoy analyzing the team and granted the negatives are easier to analyze than the positives, but obviously that’s not your thing.
The power play is abominable at less than 7% – it does’t matter whether the team is currently in first place or not.
Poor special teams play has already cost us 4 points against quality teams – that is a lot this early in the season and 4 lost points will count later in the season. So I submit that play is and has been a factor with ramifications now (we would be running away with the division early) and later (when every point counts in the standings for playoff position).
The poor special teams play also identifies weaknesses with the team – weaknesses that need to be addressed (and haven’t yet been if RR’s assessment of PP practice yesterday is accurate – I think it is).
Here’s another way to analyse the Canes season YTD that accounts for the disparity in games played. Thus far they have won 9 points in 8 games or 56.2% of the points available. Over an 82 game season that predicts 92 points, unlikely to reach the playoffs. If you calculate the same percentage for every other team the Canes are in 5th place in the Metro and 10th place in the Eastern conference 2 spots out of the last wildcard berth.
Regarding your first paragraph. Don’t be misled by our leading our division in the standings. If all the teams in our conference had played the same number of games we would rank out of a playoff position including a wild card slot. In other words we are already in a catchup role. For this reason I disregard Brindamoor’s and Williams reassurances that everything will be alright in the end. If the remedy for identified weaknesses by Brindamoor is to just keep plugging along and the tooth fairy will take care of everything, I’m not a supporter. I’m going to look at the Rangers and ask if Lindy Ruff is available.
We’ve all advocated for more NHL savvy help for our head coach. Matt has been pointing this out since before the offseason even.
I’ve always said I am worried about RBA as headcoach because of his lack of experience with systems and his reputation of poor powerplay management, we’ve had years of evidence.
His strength as a motivator was much needed, but while motivation alone can win games it can’t win a season.
Same with the outhusseling the other team every night approach.
The other team is full of pros too, sometimes better rested, playing at home or just more ready.
The first games were fun but it certainly felt like the streak was not sustainable. I didn’t expect it to halt so abruptly as it has, but the team can’t just keep going like this without trying to address its underlying weaknesses. Those provide a repeatable formula for the opponent to take the Canes down.
Get RA help, maybe keep exploring the trade of D for better depth down the center or a scorer and hope Darling comes back with the right mixof competitive fire and calm needed to cover the crease more effectively. The team is not a disaster as constructed, but neither is it a cup contender. Players and coaches have to work hard to address glaring weaknesses, doesn’t matter whether they’ve been in the league for less than a month or 20 years.
We all know that the special teams are currently an issue, but the sky isn’t falling. The Canes have held their own and more against every team they played so far this season. The special teams will improve. They have to!
We also have to remember there are several rookies playing key roles for the Canes. They are going to improve as well. All this talk about finding a new coach eight games into the season is crazy. There has been a lot of change on the roster and most of it has been positive.
The question begged is “are the Canes improved over last season?” Considering the start to the season, the team is in an improved position regardless of metric regarding the won/loss record. The team is not on the way of playing themselves out of the playoffs by Thanksgiving, a routine occurrence of the last administration here. Goal tending remains a problem, but the return of Darling holds promise. Scoring was a possible problem, while not totally solved, an encouraging work in progress. 5v5 play offense and defense is impressive across the board. Few, if any, anticipated the dismal special team play, given the improved defense and the talent on offense. Maybe the PP has suffered short term from the absence of Lindholm and Skinner, but a little tincture of time given to their rookie replacements should be curative. Since there are so many new parts to the team this season, it is reasonable to hopeful the best is yet to come. (RBA is one of those new parts.) The sense the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train is as reasonable. We fans have come by that concern honestly.
There is no talk of a new coach, not from my side. I am not suggesting replacing RBA, only to provide him with an assistant coach specializing in PP/PK strategies.
RBA excels as a motivator and the respect he commands as one of the best playrers in the game makes him a great headcoach in many ways, I just think he needs additional strategic inputs.
And the team has a number of rookies that will need time to adjust, absolutely.
We see it in Colorado, Landesgog has come a long way and there were times during his first couple of years when I thought he looked out of place and slumpy, but he’s coming into his own as a league wide superstar.
I just hope the Canes can squeak out a W tonight.