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We hope that everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving week and maybe had schedule conflicts that kept them away from PNC Arena on Wednesday and maybe even Friday before closing out the week watching Sunday’s win.
Before last week’s three-game home stand started, I said that the next two legs of the schedule could be critical for the Hurricanes 2017-18 season. First up was the three-game home stand that just wrapped up. Next up is a road-heavy stretch that sees the Hurricanes play 10 of their next 12 games on the road before another burst of home games during the holidays.
The Monday Coffee Shop will hone in on both the positives and negatives for the Hurricanes right now and consider both the home stand and the next stretch of schedule.
Carolina Hurricanes polls
Please remember to click ‘vote’ after each individual poll response.
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Discussion questions
1) With a wild variety of both positives and negatives all bunched together in the past few weeks, summarize your thoughts on the state of the team in three sentences or less.
2) What do you hope for and what do you expect from the upcoming run of 12 games with 10 of those on the road?
3) What is your biggest positive with the Hurricanes right now? What is your biggest negative?
Go Canes!
1. I will summarize in one sentence — we are inconsistent (and generally speaking those teams fall short of the playoffs).
2. My expectation is 14 out of 20 points over next ten games. Anything less and we are further behind in arguably the strongest division.
3a. Biggest positive – a few young players are developing nicely (Tuevo, Fleury, McGinn, Aho)…and the 4th line brings energy.
3b. Biggest negative – 4th year under GMRF/BP regime and we remain consistently inconsistent. At some point GMRF cannot defend this kind of play. Up to this point I do not see any kind of habits that are sustainable in the current group. I believe a change in dynamic is still needed in order to right this ship. We are (1) catalyst and (1) serviceable veteran defenseman away from turning the ship around. The catalyst brings a calming presence and makes the young players around him better. The veteran defenseman’s job is to ease pressure and simplify the game. In order to do this, you have to send someone good away to fill your needs. Without doing this, we probably fall short.
I agree with the every one of those statements. The team’s biggest problem, times ten, is not even remotely talent. It’s consistency. Bill Peters has acknowledged a number of times that the team needs to go out and give their best effort, 100% of the time. The new professionals, while immensely talented, haven’t figured that out yet. They clearly don’t know how to push through the bad days and still play their best hockey when they don’t feel at their best. This is what Justin Williams was brought in for, and I see it from him, but I have yet to see more than McGinn and occasionally Lindholm and (bless his heart) Ryan to take this example to heart.
I’ve been optimistic because the talent is clearly there, but we might be one of the streakiest teams in hockey.
All that being said. Our goaltending and defense are not meshing right now. Scott Darling has always been a great first save goalie, who tends to leave out juicy rebounds. That’s workable if you have defensemen who recognize that and prioritize clearing the puck. I saw a pristine example of this miscommunication in the Nashville game. Darling made a great save, and should have stopped the puck right there. However, he tried to make a play, clear it out to break the Canes out on a rush, nobody was ready for it and Nashville got an easy turnover and goal. You can blame Darling or the defense, but the fact of the matter is there is still some miscommunication with the new goalie. Here’s hoping that everyone starts getting on the same page really soon.
Matt, you’ve said it a number of times, our shot suppression is great, but it harms the goalie from getting into a rhythm. In order to help Darling and Ward make their job easier, the defense really needs to focus on avoiding those small breakdowns. We almost always play 55 minutes of decent hockey every game, but we don’t have a way to keep those small breakdowns from biting us. To top that off, I could be wrong, but I’m reasonably certain that Scott Darling has been living off-and-on in his own head of late. He has the skill, but damn he needs to chill and let the game come naturally.
1. We are not as good as our talent level.
2. We have to start playing consistently (and consistently well) every night. That is my hope. My expectation is that if we don’t we are going to really hurt ourselves for April hockey (I know that is not the expectation you are probably asking for, but I don’t do predictions).
3. Positive: The TSA line is never weak – as a line and as individuals.
Negative: If NHL hockey is defined as a “race to three”, we seem to be needing 4 most nights. And this even with solid time in the offensive zone and good opportunities at the net. It’s frightening, with the number of solid looks we could be getting 5-6 goals a night. But we don’t. On the flip side we lose the puck reversals which result in a transition game that we don’t seem to handle well. Given too many defensive breakdowns leading to too many “high danger” opportunities, we are fortunate enough to stay in games or put ourselves back into games. But this is not sustainable.
I have to disagree with the concept “we have enough talent”…
True talent isn’t turned on /off at a whim!
The team does so many things well…unfortunately the most important thing SCORING…is very inconsistent!
…but Ronnie would rather be cheap than acquiring “The needed scorer”!!
Do you operate at the exact same performance level, seven days a week? Do you ever have outside distractions that impact your work performance? Have you ever had a day where everything was awesome, followed by a day where nothing went right? I’m pretty sure most of them have, because the last time I checked, they’re human beings just like the rest of us. Young ones too.
Of course they are humans, but they are in an industry where performance is absolutely everything. They get paid accordingly more than the office Joe whose boss will let it slide if he burns out on Thursday and Friday. It’s easy to be nice and make excuses for them, but look at 29 other teams in the league and you don’t think they have players who go through the same ups and downs that Canes players experience? Every team goes through it, so we shouldn’t be making excuses that 29 other fanbases could use as well. Every year, despite ups and downs, just over half the league makes the playoffs. So those teams have figured it out, and often they remain the same cast of teams on a fairly consistent basis. So the Canes have to get to that level and it doesn’t serve our judgment well as a fanbase to provide excuses at that ‘nice’ level.
I agree with Puckgod, the scoring is inconsistent and having super talented players that don’t score consistently is a talent level below other teams that regardless of their overall talent level they score goals. The thing that frightens me the most about the Canes is the lack of net-front presence (on both ends) and when I watch a lot of highlights or some other games around the league the good teams score in front of the net. The Canes never seem to get to the front of the net. It is a talent issue, it’s a lack of heavy-ness/willingness to go to the scoring areas. It’ll either come eventually for some of the young guys (look at how Skinner has found a way to stay healthy and be in dangerous areas as he progressed), or the Canes have the wrong group of guys. No excuses.
1). Close to breaking through to be a top team. Close to breaking the hearts of Caniacs for another season. Still positioned to go either way.
2). Hope for all the facets to come together for three weeks. I expect Canes end 3-4 games above .500. I hope they end 6 games above.
3). Positive—Aho scoring goals. Negative—no one on defense producing other than Hanifin.
1) Inconsistent from the goalie, to the defense, to the offense. Flashes of excellent play intertwined with inexplicable lapses. Veteran champion leadership not fully utilized.
2) Hope for 17-18 of 24 but expect 14-16. Hope for improvement every game, but expect improvement to be statistical across multiple games.. which will look more like inconsistency.
3) Biggest positives are TSA line, 4th line, and potential on the backend (goalie and D). Biggest negative is inconsistency on the backend and inconsistency for middle six forwards. Middle six forwards are not gelling as a group; Williams effort has been solid and Skinner occasionally is successful trying to do everything himself. Power play looks like everyone is “middle six” per my preceding description.
1. Crazy inconsistent at all levels. Way too many slow starts.
2. With the team and goalies are performing inconsistently, it’s hard to know what to expect. My hope is the team will win half of the games on the upcoming road trip. Sometimes road trips help build character and develop grit…but we shall see.
3. Positive: For the most part, there has been more offense and it’s good to see Aho and TT getting the puck in the net consistently. Negative: Inconsistent and uneven inconsistent play which we have been subjected to for years now.
There’s a lot of pressure on Darling and his role with the franchise is a big adjustment — I’m really pulling for him.
The level and consistency of play must change if we have a chance to make the playoffs. There’s time, but the team has to take the steps up to meet that goal.