A short season preview series kicked off on Tuesday afternoon. If you missed that article, you can find it HERE.
Nowadays, the conversation happens pretty much on a daily basis in the Daily Cup of Joe article, but with the 2018-19 season now only a day away, the official Coffee Shop reopens today with a set of polls and discussion questions. Today’s Coffee Shop is part 1 of 2 with part 1 focusing on the team in total. Part 2 which will be up in the next day or two will have a set of polls on individual player performance.
Carolina Hurricanes polls on team performance
Please remember to click ‘vote’ after each individual poll response.
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Carolina Hurricanes discussion questions
1) What are the top one or two factors that will determine if the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes make the playoffs?
2) Who has team-level predictions (players will be a separate Coffee Shop article later this week) for the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes?
Go Canes!
1) Penalty kill. The team will take more penalties this season, perhaps significantly more. All the players who moved on were disciplined and took few penalties. Lindholm and Nordstrom were excellent in this regard. Several of the new faces like Svechnikov, Hamilton, and Zykov are not as disciplined. If the success rate for killing penalties doesn’t improve but the number of penalties does, then the Canes will be out of contention by New Year’s Day.
Power play. The other special team will also need to show big improvement. I am confident that while Svechnikov and Zykov will cause some stress on the PK, they will help the power play become significantly better. I expect the success rate of the PP to increase from 18.4 to something around 21.5, which was the cut off last year for top 10.
2) The team will play meaningful games in April–I think the last three games could decide if the Canes make the playoffs. As mentioned, I think the power play is close to NHL top 10. The PK will score at least 8 short-handed goals because of Foegele and Martinook but also because it will be on the ice more than in past seasons.
1. A. Goaltending. If we can get around .915% from the 3 guys we should make it.
B. Can the rookies stand up to an 82 game grind? Or at least not hit the wall all at the same time?
2. To go against history and common sense: 95 points, 8th seed, +10 goal differential, .916 team SV%