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A #CanesCoaster of a season has seen its share of ups and downs across the board
The Carolina Hurricanes 2017-18 season has been a roller coaster ride with a many a sudden twist and turn. Just when the trajectory seems unmistakably upward a deflating losing streak like last week seems to come out of nowhere. But seemingly just before team reaches its breaking point, every losing streak seems to end with a burst of wins just like the current three-game winning streak. No doubt Hurricanes fans have seen a team that could battle for last in the league on multiple occasions but have also seen utterly dominant games and strong stretches that suggest a playoff return is imminent.
Along the way, Canes fans have seen all kinds of good and bad.
The goaltending has seen Cam Ward put together some strong stretches of play and the goaltending duo lead the way to wins in both halves of back-to-backs on three occasions. But Canes fans have also seen Scott Darling hit a lower that was lower than anyone could have imagined.
On offense, the team has had a handful of massive goal-scoring outbursts in single games and even short stretches when it looked like the offense might be clicking. But the team currently ranks 24th in the NHL for goals scored and has seen more struggles than surges offensively even recently.
Finally, there is the young blue line — the blue line that for a couple years now has been expected to eventually become the team’s top strength and the catalyst for the next leg up in the Carolina Hurricanes rebuild and revitalization. And just like the rest of the team, the young blue line has seen incredibly high highs but also matched them with similarly low lows. There have been nights when the Hurricanes defense just looks like wave after wave of lab-engineered defenseman clones with each player possessing equal size, skating ability and skill. But there have been other nights when Fleury looked like a rookie, Hanifin happened upon another ‘train wreck’ game defensively, Faulk just looked a step slow and defensive break downs abounded here, there and everywhere.
Making sense of it and searching for a catalyst for it all
The rapid pace at which things go from good to bad and then back to good has been dizzying at times and because of that it all seems completely random at times. But when I parse through it all trying to make sense of it, I really think the play of the young defense corps is quite often the driver for everything else.
Important to note is that I still think getting at least serviceable goaltending is the single most important ingredient for the Hurricanes success during playoff race crunch time. The deficit if the goaltending is sub-par is just too much to make up on too many nights. But I actually think the blue line has a significant role in that too.
When the Hurricanes defense is on, it tends to drive everything else everything else.
The Hurricanes are 9-3-2 when a defenseman scores a goal. Maybe even more significant than the significance of offensive production from the blue line is how the group can drive play and make for an easy night for the goalie when they play well. Scott Darling had his best outing in awhile in the team’s 4-1 win over the Canucks on Friday, but the story was not that of Darling standing on his head. Rather, the story was Darling only needing to be sound with very little spectacular required because of how well the defense played. Similarly, I would argue that neither of Cam Ward’s two shutouts were among his best few games. The defense was incredibly stingy in his early January shutout over the Penguins and nearly as good in his recent shutout over the Canadiens.
On the flip side, the young group is still prone to games where they just do not seem to have their skating legs at which point the ability to sort things out in terms of coverage seems to completely evaporate into thin air. There have been a few games where the goalie simply did not have it and was beaten for soft goals, but there have also been a decent number of games where goaltending and blue line struggles went hand in hand. The pair of losses two weekends ago saw break down after break down force the goalies to make repeated saves on grade A chances.
Similarly, on defense the Hurricanes have players who can skate, pass and advance the puck on a good day. On those days, the offense benefits not just from goals scored by the defensemen but also from their ability to move the puck and help gain entry to the offensive zone with possession. The result is more time in the offensive zone where goals happen and not surprisingly oftentimes more goals.
But the Jekyl to go with the offensive catalyst Hyde is a young group of defenseman that can at times regress and play a sloppy brand of hockey that can hem the team in its own end and put pressure on the goalie especially when the break downs creep into the game.
Back to the future
Perhaps not surprisingly, the likely driver of the next wave of success points right back to where it has for awhile now.
In the end, I think the play by the young blue line both puts one foot forward showing where hopefully the team is headed while at the same time has one foot anchored in a past that showed promise but really was not up to NHL snuff yet in terms of every game consistency and the ability to be a positive both offensively and defensively on a nightly basis.
Entering a critical juncture in both the 2017-18 season and the broader project to rebuild the team over the past few years, the near-term outcome could very well be decided by the young blue line. Will the group be able to take a step forward with its back foot and move fully into the future? Or under the pressure of the playoff chase is the group destined to regress and pull its front foot back one more time?
Because of how the play of the blue line has become a catalyst for other areas of the game , especially the goaltending, I think how this sorts out for the remainder of the 2017-18 season could well decide the fate of it.
Go Canes!
You nailed it. When all six defensemen (the ones on the ice because I realize Dahlback is important given his usage) play solid and one steps up offensively, the Canes are winners.
What is promising is that the unit has seemed to improve as the season progressed. Each has also shown resilience and played well after a bad game. You wrote more than a month ago that Fleury is often the key–I would extend that to say the Fleury/Faulk pairing. If both are sound defensively and Faulk is dangerous offensively, the Kings’ game happens.
This all could be true. The team as a whole has been capitalizing on more chances while limiting mistakes. The goalies have let in less ‘weak’ goals while holding the fort when other teams surge and attempt come backs. The forwards are back checking consistently in helping the defense while hitting net instead of going wide. And as you mentioned, the defense has been cutting down lanes better while limiting coverage breakdowns and also adding scoring punch from the back end. The wild card in all this is that our power play is night and day better. Handling the ebb and flow in hockey is the key for successful teams, so I think our catalyst is a result of the whole.
We expected the defense to be the driver before the season started and it sure seems that it’s the driver, both as a positive and as a negative, when you look at how things have transpired over the season. If they have actually figured out how to be consistently sound the rest of the season, we should be very competitive almost every night.
The play of the special teams since Jan-1, though, cannot be overlooked. Since then, our PP is #2 and our PK is #10 (when prior to Jan-1 they were #28/#23). That is an enormous improvement.
Taken together, it gives me hope that the team may actually be coming together as a team, and that we are on the cusp our best, most consistent play when we need it the most.
dmiller. Your point about the team coming together is true. For some reason, the key players have not all be at their best together. The first few weeks Skinner was excellent, but Aho couldn’t find the net. Faulk and Lindholm both seem to wait for the All-Star break the past two seasons. If they are all firing on offense and Pesce and Slavin can find the level that had them both +23 last year, then the Canes will be as good as anyone in the East other than TB and Boston.
One more thing I think is interesting. If you look at the current roster and compare it to the roster of last March when we went on the 13-game point streak, it is almost identical – except better (I used the 3/31 game vs. CBJ). The only differences are:
– JW for Lucas Wallmark
– Fleury for Tennyson
– TvR for Hainsey
– Darling for Lack
It just goes to show you what happens when young players have another 70-80 games of experience. We are skating an almost identical team yet we’re 8-10 points ahead of last year’s pace and in a WC position. Growth and development obviously matter, and I think we’re now – finally – seeing it in action.
That bodes well for the future.