The diminishing situation
Increasingly my Daily Cup of Joe article from December 11 has become an ominous suggestion of impending doom.
In that article I wrote:
If the Hurricanes struggle through the home stretch, the run of road games that follow could put the 2018-19 season in a precarious position leading up to the midway point of the season. If instead the Hurricanes can make hay at home, the team could enter the important stretch of divisional games higher in the standings and with momentum.
I followed that up in my game preview for that same day by reiterating the importance of the stretch ahead when I wrote:
So if the Hurricanes can build momentum during the upcoming home-heavy stretch, hopefully it carries into the middle part of the season that has been problematic in recent years. If instead the team struggles in these next seven games and the negative momentum carries into the road stretch, the Hurricanes will find themselves in an all to familiar position in mid-January trying to dig out of a hole.
And here we are.
With Saturday’s lackluster loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins the Hurricanes are now 1-4-1 through the first six games of the stretch. And suddenly the Hurricanes are seven points out of a playoff spot (adjusted for games played). After the finale of the seven-game home-heavy stretch on Sunday against Boston, the team takes to the road for six out of the next eight.
If the trajectory does not change dramatically and rapidly, the team could well emerge from that run focused on draft lottery positioning, player development and other things outside of success in the 2018-19 season.
Abbreviated recap of 3-0 loss to the Penguins
The story of Saturday’s 3-0 loss was Sidney Crosby having an early holiday feast at the Hurricanes expense. He had three of the spectacular playmaking efforts that put him among the league’s few elite players in dishing out assists for bang-bang type goals. Jordan Staal and whoever was trying to help him had nothing for an answer through two periods when Staal left the game with an upper body injury.
On the Hurricanes side of the ledger, the story was a familiar one. The team mustered a fairly typical combination of not generating enough truly good chances, not finishing when they did and facing a (legitimately) in this case hot goalie. The Hurricanes did have some grade A chances to score. Warren Foegele failed to score on two separate partial breakaways seemingly getting too deep at which point there is no shooting angle at which point hoping for a hole against an NHL goalie is usually fruitless. Jordan Martinook had another point blank chance but was thwarted. And the Canes missed the net on a couple other grade A chances. The team also mustered its usual share of low-probability just chucking the puck at the net once facing a deficit. And though it is not always the case, I thought Matt Murray was legitimately stellar on Saturday night. Worth noting is that Curtis McElhinney returned and played well despite the outcome.
Player and other notes
1) Losing best against best
As noted above, the outcome of the game was decided by the match up of Jordan Staal versus Sidney Crosby. Crosby was just too much and generated all that the Penguins needed offensively with Staal and company just not having much for answers.
2) Sebastian Aho
Make no mistake that he continues to be a bright spot and clearly part of the solution more than part of the problem. That said, one thing that does stand out about his game is his lack of ability to break down defenses by cutting through the teeth of the defense like other high-end scoring centers like McDavid, MacKinnon, Crosby and others. With a defenseman in front of him entering the offensive zone, his path forward is almost always to the outside. That can and does work as he can use his speed and skating ability to make space and buy time to find team mates. But a greater ability to break down defenses by forging into and through them can sometimes be more effective and expand means of scoring on nights when the defense is sound and pushes everything outside to non-dangerous scoring chances.
3) The goaltending
From the category of finding a new way to struggle, goaltending continues to not be the problem since the team settled on Curtis McElhinney and Petr Mrazek as its duo. Mrazek was not perfect, but he was good enough when McElhinney was out with an injury. And McElhinney was decent or better in Saturday’s 3-0 loss. First and foremost, the team’s current power outage offensively is its Achilles’ heel.
4) Speaking of lack of scoring
The Hurricanes have now been held to a goal or less in six out of their last ten games.
5) Too much patience?
I think we are witnessing Rod Brind’Amour’s inexperience as a head coach and also the lack of help in that regard on the bench. On the one hand, I prefer Brind’Amour’s patience and long haul mentality over too much knee-jerk reaction coaching. But at the same time, the NHL is unforgiving in terms of extended losing runs that span more than a few games. A critical part of an NHL coach’s job is finding ways to spark or jolt his team out of rough patches before they sink the season. No doubt, if the Hurricanes ‘stick to their game’ they will eventually rebound and emerge from the current struggles simply because of the long NHL season and enough opportunities for redemption. The problem is that the probability that this rebound is another case of too little too late after the season is lost is growing rapidly right now.
The players do need to stick with it, but the coaching staff also needs to play a role in finding some modest amount of success in the here and now such that the season is not lost.
Up next is a quick turnaround on Sunday and the last of the seven-game home-heavy stretch before the Christmas break. The schedule offers no mercy as the opponent is a Boston Bruins team that comes in having won three straight and sports another top line that can do the damage by itself just like Crosy’s line did on Saturday.
Go Canes!
I think your comments are way too kind when it comes to the coaching – and the ability (willingness??) to make adjustments game to game.
The only 3 players that have impressed me of late – Slavin, de Haan, and – fof course – Svech. Even Aho has been a disappointment of late.
If the AZ game is the exception – I don’t want to see more games of the norm, like tonight.
And listen to RBA’s remarks after the game – so outside his range of comfort and competency.
I want to second everything raleightj said. My adds or expanded comments are:
1. RBA is in over his head as a head coach (or even coach). Coaching and coaching decisions have been horrible IMO. Let’s compare the Canes to the Islanders. The Islanders lost Tavares and DeHaan, two of their top players, and got nothing for them. Barzal is having an off year scoring goals. They lost their NUmber 1 goalie, Halak, for nothing. The team had a lousy year last year under Weight even before those player losses. What has been their solution. BARRY TROTZ, AN EXPERIENCED NHL COACH! We have a team made up of many young players. IMO players have more confidence when they can look to a coach who has a proven track record of success IN THE NHL. The Canes started this run by hiring Muller, a lifetime player and assistant coach. We gave him three years or so to learn how the head coaching job and dispensed with him when our efforts failed. We then went to Bill Peters and allowed him to come here to gain his NHL experience, i.e; make all the mistakes rookie coaches make and then move on after we gave him his three year training period as an NHL coach. Then we come up and replace Peters with RBA who has no head coaching experience anywhere. I suppose we will give him another three years to work out the kinks and learn the job at the team’s and fan’s expense. I guess we learn nothing through failure. It becomes a way of life. This team needs a strong head coach now! We need that strong head coach to select his assistants. We need to forget about hiring figures out of our successful past and making them current failures. Just because they were star players doesn’t qualify them for management of a franchise.
We as fans need to stop patting the team on the rear and saying we understand and are with you no matter what, and start demanding management to get off their rear’s and invest in this team as much as the fans have. The franchise is becoming a joke. The Islanders lost several stars, Vancouver had their two top star players retire, Buffalo has risen from the dead (they thank us for the help I am sure). All teams who had fallen to the Canes level or worse as of last year, yet all of whom in one year have turned their fortunes around. It isn’t taking them 10 years of losing to do it. They are proving that success first starts with excellent management, i.e; with how the team is run off the ice. We are helping prove that is true. Damn it! We need to shore up scoring! Now! Or is the answer to me, there is nothing we can do. If that is the answer, what do we have in Charlotte? A bunch of lifetime AHLers who we are afraid to give any opportunity to show their ability in the NHL. Why Saarela, Koukanen, Poturalski, Necas, etc. in the AHL learning when they could be learning on the job in the NHL without any ill effect on the Canes standing in the NHL. We need to draft better and develop faster. The league is leaving us in the dust.
Well now. I am not very glad that I went to the game last night. It confirmed for me a frightening suspicion I have had. It is a common problem for teams that have a heavy mix of untested players.
In a post game interview, Willy summed it up rather well. The team lacks mental toughness.
It is my not-very-humble opinion that the same affliction has certain fan-bloggers in its grasp.
This team does not lack speed. It does not lack for skill. It can score. It can play this game better than most other teams in the NHL.
When it really really wants to.
The team has proven this in spurts throughout this season, for anyone who is willing to look and see it. But there is a statement in the Bible for many of my fellow fans on this site.
“There is none so blind as he [or she] who will not see. ”
This team is lacking one large, strong, mean and nasty defenseman. I don’t care if he wears training skates. All he needs to do is keep the slot as well as the crease clear of enemy players. And if they resist his actions, make them bleed. We have a good pk. Let’s give them practice.
And as the refs have proved to us, they will miss half of it anyway.
In case you haven’t noticed, our defense is lightweight and soft. deHaan and Faulk are the closest we have to effective in keeping the enemy away from the slot as well as the crease. They are not enough.
Bring up Caj and/or Carrick.
Fishy and Turbo will be okay once Ferland plays himself back into game shape. We need to bring up Bishop and one other big physical forward, or import one or two giants via trade or waiver.
I know that all of this is over the heads of some of my fellow fans on this site. We are dealing with human men, not robots.
Mental toughness follows physical toughness.
You MAY be right with your comments about the needs for the team to improve. You also MAY be wrong. I hope you are right, but you will probably never find out. That is because the management of this team is so disfunctional that by the time they get around to doing anything it won’t matter. My suggestion is for you to stop worrying about and criticizing comments of others as somehow being the major concern regarding Canes hockey and focus on continuing to make constructive suggestions on how the team can get back into being a viable playoff contender. If you are looking for me to solve the woes of the Canes, you are looking in the wrong place. My name is not Dundon, Wadddell, or Brindamoor and as I have stated in the past no one has anointed me as the Nostradamus of hockey. I am just a plugger fan and know it. In regards to Canes hockey there is only one thing I am sure of and that we are steadily falling further behind in the standings. How do we improve? I don’t care who comes up with the answer, but so far I haven’t witnessed the current management of the team accomplishing it. Whether its yours or anyone else’s solution that proves to be correct and solves the problem I will be a happy camper. Right now though, I haven’t been proven wrong in what I had to say and you haven’t been proven right in what you have had to say. But, if it makes you feel any better about the Canes to criticize my level of hockey intelligence continue to do so as I am for anything that will improve any fan’s experience relative to Canes hockey. By the way, you do have another supporter I am aware of who shares your opinion of my level of hockey expertise. She’s my wife and she’s somewhat harsher in her criticism of some of my views. She has a much simpler solution to all the Cane’s woes which she expresses over and over at the games. It’s “shoot”, “shoot”,…”darn it” (cleaned up from “d–n it”) shoot.” As with everyone else’s suggestions, the Canes have been slow to adopt her solution. Keep writing pwrlss and I will keep reading.
I think another problem wit the organization, one that has already been hinted at is the good old boy culture.
I am not sure that the head coach should be close friend and ex team mates with the captain and some of the star players. Don’t mix friendship with business.
It is time to bring in fresh management and fresh coaching staff, easier and cheaper than bringing in more players.
And, yes, if people choose to be blind to the fact that the head coach is utterly clueless on how to be an NHL head coach, that’s their choice. Just look at the post game interviews and mantra of “we’re doing everything right, results will come”.
Every team has a burst of quality, there is a lot of parity in the NHL. The trick is to have every player play hard every shift and to maximize the combination of skills and strengths the team has and use those to neutralize the opponent.
And, heck, why not bring up some big and nasty guys from Clt and try out the “team needs more goons” theory, there’s little to lose.
It’s time to go tanking, the team is already doing it anyway, bring up the Checkers to see what we got in the pipeline. Get a chance at drafting Hughes, heck, maybe even bring #12 back on a short contract to shore up the middle, only one year, once he comes down here his conditioning will go down the drain.
Aho and TT are playing their way out of fat contracts right now, maybe that’s part of the plan.
I wonder how Buf managed to have one of their players not report for practice and then get rid of his contract for virtually nothing. That is brilliant management, wish the Canes could have done that with Semin and Darling.
breezy, I share most of your views above. What I like most of all is you have presented ideas in a constructive manner. Whether you or I are correct isn’t what’s important. After all we have no real say in what actions management takes. What is important is that you and I (and I think all the contributors to this site want) is for the Canes to again be a playoff contending team and not a perennial bottom dweller in the league. Keep writing. I read everyone’s stuff (technical term). ctcaniac, Raleightj, lessthan…, pwrless, dmilleravid, puckgod, …. and all the rest, I read them all. You and all of them are part of the overall hockey experience. Just remember when reading my crap…er…insights, I have found the answer to never being wrong in my opinions. I just raised my level on tolerance to plus or minus infinity and that solved the problem for me. Most all of the rest of you contributors don’t need to take such drastic action, but I was being proven wrong so often in my views I had to do something and this appeared to be the only way out for me.
I am referring to the bit about Berglund, see https://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=96688&blogger_id=209
Heading into the break, Jeff Skinner is the second highest scorer in the NHL with 26 goals (behind Ovi’s 29), damn glad we got rid of that locker room cancer instead of asking ourselves, what is it about the Canes’ team culture that sucks all life, compete, and scoring out of our squad. Again, maybe Powerless’s analysis about grit and size are right on the money. Or maybe, instead of adding the one piece that is missing, management prefers to get rid of the pieces that cost too much. I am ebating whether tonight’s game is the last I bother watching on TV for a while, it would be the first time I gave up on a team, but I suspect I’ll stick it out until the end of the year at least, and I would be excited to watch if the team started trying out Clt players and changing its identity, even with less than spectacular results.
I go back to the saying posted prominently in the renovated weight room. “Process Over Results”. Work the process even if the results aren’t there. The results will be there. And you hear it all the time in post-game comments of RBA, including last night.
We are 40% into the season.
When does that become delusional?
When does that become the proverbial definition of insanity?
Asking for a friend…
“Process over results”.
It is an interesting concept. I once had a coach who told me that if I did everything he told me to do and lost, he would not blame me. And if I decided to do it my way and we won, I waloud find myself off the team. I did it his way and we won.
I was easy. Other players on the team thought they were smarter than the coach. Maybe they were smarter. But they never got a chance to prove it.
I have heard that Roddy doesn’t know how to coach an NHL team. Several people say that and it seems to me that you guys and gals know something I don’t know.
Please enlighten me. Please tell me what those things are that he isn’t doing that he should. Please tell me what he is doing that he shouldn’t. Please be specific. Assume that I don’t know what you are talking about, because I don’t.
Process over results only works if you have the right process to begin with, a broken process will not yield results.
The assumption that I do not agree with is that the process is correct.
We’ve had a fairly sizable turnover of players over the last 5 or 6 years but the results haven’t changed.
Recently, when these players go elsewhere and follow a different process they shine.
What hasn’t changed is the core of the team’s coaching and management, again, downsizing does not mean change, it means downsizing.
The example of the Islanders is a great one. A team that on paper looks worse than the Canes in my opinion has outplayed the Canes, and is actually doing quite well, while the Canes sit in the second to last place in the conference.
Montreal, another team that is suffering a major reorg and is woefully short on superstars is doing quite well.
The difference is the coaching and motivation and not getting the best out of the players, that is on the coach.
The recap of yesterday’s game from the Penguins blogger has a pretty accurate insight into the Canes recent history
https://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog/Ryan-Wilson/Sidney-Crosby-might-have-a-new-role/177/96739
I admit I get downright pissed about what I see sometimes, and this site gives me a place to express my frustrations and rant a bit when I need to. I think I’ve also posted to this site when I’ve enjoyed some magical games, those that almost make it worthwhile.
So keep posting y’all. You can disagree with me all you want, that’s fine because we all agree on the goal, to watch our beloved hockey team do a phoenix and rise from the ashes of recent drout.