Around January, I wrote a piece for McKeens about the Florida Panthers. They were out of a playoff spot by six points with no games in hand and needed to play at about a 117-point pace to make the dance. My main takeaway from writing that article was that they were a weird, complicated team that had a lot of different things working against them. They were a positive team at five-on-five in terms of goal differential & most of their stats across the boards were very mid. They weren’t a great shooting team but not a terrible one, same could be said for their goaltending and power play. Everything seemed kind of…okay, albeit a major drop off from last season’s President’s Trophy winning club.
The one thing working against them was their record in one-goal games. At that point of the season, they had only won 7 of those games & finished the year with 14. They would beat up on bad teams, win some blowouts and either struggle in close games or have nights where their special teams would cost them (like this bizarre loss to the Oilers). This team had enough in them to make a playoff push, they were just running out of time & were fighting an uphill battle in a competitive Eastern Conference. Early & late collapses from the likes of Washington & Pittsburgh opened the door for them & they’ve lost a grand total of one out of their last 12 games en route to a Stanley Cup Final appearance.
The Hurricanes, on the other hand, had a lockdown in one-goal games. They were tied with the Vegas Golden Knights for the league lead with 25, not counting their 10 wins where they scored an empty net goal to go up two. This isn’t out of the ordinary for a good team, as you’re going to have a lot of tight games in a long season and the gap between the 3rd & 15th best team in the league isn’t as stark as it used to be. There is some level of instability associated with it, though. You’re not going to run your opponent out of the building every night, but the pendulum can swing in either direction when you’re consistently in games decided by one shot because it means you’re not scoring or preventing enough goals.
Carolina ended up on the wrong side of this in the Conference Final, losing every game by one goal. It might have been the worst way to go out because every game was so close and they did just enough to make themselves believe they could win the next game. Brind’Amour’s presser where he sounded like he was in denial about the series being over kind of summed it up. Every game was close and sometimes the coin lands on tails.
Going into the playoffs, I didn’t have Carolina as a Cup favorite because they were a middling team that couldn’t score for most of March & April. Their only form of offense was having one of their defensemen wire a shot through three layers of traffic or scoring on a weak deflection. They turned a corner in the Islanders series and looked closer to what we saw in December against New Jersey. Pucks were going in, but they were also finding more ways to create offense & getting their forwards more space. Things crashed down to Earth against Florida. Hard.
The Story Behind The Stats
Carolina at their B-game is still better than some teams, if only in the sense that they’re winning the chance battle because they aren’t giving up much in volume. There’s a reason it’s called a B-game, though. Out-chancing a team is good, doing it by an average of only 11-9 a game at even strength is not. Sergei Bobrovsky deserves a lot of credit for his play this series, because Florida didn’t give him much room for error and he had to be this good for them to win in four games. That said, the defense made sure to keep the more dangerous plays away from him even if he had to stop a lot of shots.
Where Florida made up the difference was on the power play and being the better passing team. Carolina had more chances, 17 of them were off deflections & rebounds. These are still scoring chances, but different than one created through a passing play with more space. Florida had a distinct advantage there with 9 “high danger passes” compared to only six for Carolina. 22 of the Hurricanes passing plays also came through low-to-high shot assists, which are either low-percentage point shots or plays where they’re trying to get a tip chance. This is what the Hurricanes usually do even when they’re on their game, the difference was the chance volume wasn’t there. Part of that is Bobrovsky and the other is Florida taking away most of the rebound chances.
The other was Carolina’s lack of capitalizing on pretty much any mistake Florida made. Even with Bobrovsky playing lights out, there were a lot of instances of Florida not getting pucks out and the Hurricanes making a mess out of those chances. In the first three games, they created 30 scoring chances off plays that started in the offensive zone, only 7 of them were turnovers. Things started to turn in Game 4 where they created 11 chances, including two of their goals, but they were still leaving offense on the table. This is where I’d like to expand some of my work from a “scoring chances gained/lost” standpoint because while Carolina had more chances in volume, they also had the puck more and the games turned into “we need a goal” more than them trying to tilt the ice.
Carolina’s low-quality shot volume approach has taken a lot of criticism this series. This is an instance where they make an attempt to break it, the only problem with this picture is they don’t execute it at all. Necas gets the puck back at center, delays forever only to dump the puck in, which isn’t the end of the world because Carolina gets it back on the forecheck. They try a passing play up high with Aho skating downhill on the left wing. He has no clear lane to the net & nobody to pass to unless he can thread the needle to Teravainen, a high-risk play at this point of the period. Jalen Chatfield going for a change didn’t help here, but this is one of those times when you’d like to see a more cohesive approach from Carolina. You only get so many opportunities like this per game with your top line & it just seemed like nobody was on the same page. Aho tried to carry the team, Jarvis couldn’t get to the net (only 3 shots all series), Noesen couldn’t get anything on net and Teravainen could only make quick, reactionary plays (if any at all).
This is where the lack of top-end talent in the forward corps started to show. You want to see your best players “take over the game” and while end-to-end rushes where you’re cutting through defenders are cool, most of the time it’s done with quick, sharp passing plays or creating space for yourself in tight games. Carolina struggles to do that even when they’re playing well. Their saving grace is they can usually recover the puck & setup something on the next attempt, even if it’s not a great chance. They were doing that in Games 1-3. Where it went wrong in Game 4 was their bad offense fed Florida’s transition game, which was mostly a non-factor until then.
The “safe is death” trope has never been more true. Sure, it starts with Necas turning the puck over on the boards because he’s out-numbered and his only real play is moving it cross-corner or to the boards. Carolina has no real forecheck on this play because Barkov moved the puck before MacEachern got a piece of him & Florida can freely move the puck up ice. Carolina has guys back (almost in a weird 1-3-1 formation because Pesce is playing very high) and instead of skating into it, Florida sends the puck over the defenders with Duclair & Verhaeghe picking up speed through the neutral zone. Skjei tries to knock the puck down (if there is one habit I wish to get out of the team’s defensemen, it’s this) and ends up skating out of the play after Verhaeghe recovers it & eventually sets up Barkov, who sets up Duclair for the early goal.
We can blame Necas for the empty calorie entry & turnover, or the fact that he had no plays open to him after gaining the zone. Then there’s Florida cutting through their forecheck with a simple flip pass & ending up outnumbered in front of their own net despite keeping four players back. If you’re afraid to make plays, sometimes you give up plays. This trend continued throughout the game.
This, this broke me. It’s not that bad because Burns got back to take away the pass, but it’s another example of some low-percentage shots biting Carolina in the ass. Skjei makes an aggressive pinch to keep the puck in the zone for the sake of a nothing shot from the boards. This happens because Carolina has two forwards camped out in front of net & the high forward is posted up along the boards for….well, reasons.
I guess the potential play here is to maybe setup Skjei on the weakside because he’s got a lot of space to skate into a shot. Instead, Burns takes the shot (as he usually does) and Skjei’s the only guy on that side of the ice to recover the puck. He pinches & there’s nobody covering for him if he can’t get the puck to the net, which is exactly what happens. It’s a rare case of the simple, perimeter shot being more high-risk because of the situation. These are more common than you’d think.
What makes it frustrating is that there was another play open, one they’ve run countless times this year & they either didn’t see it or just went the easy route to get something to the net. It’s hard for me to say if this is a systematic thing or just a general mindset that the players have to figure out on their own. There are always plays to be had & passes to be made, but the players have to be a step ahead to connect the dots.
Giving credit where it’s due, they did just that on Jesper Fast’s game-tying goal.
This was Carolina Hurricanes Organized Chaos at its best. Brady Skjei acts like a forward here as the first forechecker & immediately makes himself a passing option instead of going back to his point. He gets a good chance & Fast goes after the puck with Martinook & Stastny backing him up in support. What I love about this is they set themselves up to make another play should Fast win the puck instead of immediately jumping in. If they did that, the rink shrinks and it’s essentially a prolonged board battle with nowhere to go with the puck except maybe the points. Fast gets the puck & Skjei jumps in for Stastny to hit him for one of Carolina’s few passing plays to the slot all series. He ends up missing the net, but Chatfield pinches, Martinook/Fast see this & setup another triangle. This time Fast buries the chance to tie the game.
This was everything Carolina was missing for most of the series. Linemates on the same page, trust in the first forward to win the puck on the forecheck and, most importantly, quick passes down low instead of reverting to the same low-to-high offense.
Unfortunately, things fell part on the next shift.
This is what a typical Hurricanes cycle looks like except they go for a one-timer with Aho from the right flank. It’s not from a great angle and I’m not sure if it’s the most high-percentage play in the world at five-on-five anyway. He whiffed on it (which is whatever), then everything falls apart. Jarvis goes to the net expecting Burns to shoot and Teravainen goes to the high slot like Aho is going to pass him the puck. If the play wasn’t botched, this is probably a moot point, but neither of them are in a position to get the puck & Teravainen is outnumbered 3-on-1 on the retrieval. Instead of keeping the puck in or trying to kill time, he immediately moves it and Florida gets a rush chance with Carolina’s defense already backing up.
They were in the middle ground of playing too safe and not being able to execute the more precise plays because it’s outside their comfort zone or it’s the wrong place/time. Aho’s one-timer isn’t a bad play in a vacuum. Trying it then might not have been the best time and his linemates made it an all-or-nothing type of chance with how they read the play. The defensemen then have to back off because Teravainen is outnumbered along the boards & they give up a chance anyway with Reinhart having a full head of steam. You almost wonder if they were even going to try a passing play that wasn’t a point shot if they made it to overtime after how poorly this turned out.
The most frustrating part for Carolina is despite all of these problems, they were close enough in every game that just a couple of completed passes here & there could have made a difference. Then again, when you’re among the league leaders in games decided by one goal, this probably doesn’t happen by accident.
Individual Stats
Now let’s skim through some individual microstat performers.
Tkachuk was the best player in the series. In addition to the three game-winning goals & he also led the team in primary shot assists & a little under half of his shot contributions were scoring chances. With Florida having limited possessions this was a series about when you made plays as opposed to how many you made in volume. He was the leading example of that in a 1999 Stars Joe Niewuendyk type of way.
Barkov has been a major problem for the Hurricanes throughout his career & this series was no different. A big reason why Carolina had to stay so honest on their forecheck is because of how good he was as the low forward & getting pucks out of the zone. He led the team in defensive zone retrievals leading to exits & his line was Florida’s best off the rush. In a series where transition play was hard to come by, this line was Florida’s catalyst, scoring both of their rush goals in Games 1 & 4 respectively.
The other big defensive zone player for Florida? Sam Reinhart, who was only slightly behind Barkov in DZ retirevals leading to exits. Carolina struggled against them for this reason & came very close to getting burned in Game 4. Factor in his power play production & he was a huge player for Florida.
Aho did a lot of good work with not much to show for it. He had to be the carrier & the triggerman on his line, leading the team in shots, scoring chances & zone entries. He had more help last round with Jarvis doing more work in the neutral zone & being his passing option. The roles were flipped this round with Jarvis playing more of a netfront, secondary role & Noesen ended up taking more of the shots from this line. Florida was dialed in on protecting Bobrovsky, so Jarvis had to really fight to get to the net while Noesen led the team in rush shots with only three scoring chances to show for it.
Necas started the series strong & struggled in the two road games, recording only two scoring chances, setting up none while recording only five controlled entries on 11 attempts. He’s a player who you would expect to be a game-breaker and sort of faded into the background when the games got tougher, not really hurting the team while not doing much to help either. Even as one of the team’s stars, he has limitations and I understand not wanting to constantly change the lines to get him going. At the same time, the Canes had an option that worked in the regular season with him & Aho on the same line. They played together for only six minutes all series at five-on-five.
Carolina’s robust penalty kill let them down badly. Some of it was Florida taking advantage of fluke plays (Tkachuk in Game 2) or Florida making a great play with little space (Reinhart in Game 3). When the chips were on the line, however, Florida was a step ahead with breaking down Carolina’s tendency to chase after passing plays instead of staying home to block shots. Brady Skjei played a huge role in tying Game 4. He also played a huge role in Tkachuk’s winner by chasing Barkov in a non-dangerous area while not disrupting the play at all. This along with Martinook guarding the pass to the point, Aho blocking the cross-seam play & Pesce tied up with Bennett in front of the net opened a wide open lane for Tkachuk. The Canes penalty kill unit prides themselves in knowing all the set plays & applying pressure while also taking away passing options. Here, they did that while allowing the best player on the ice to go uncontested from behind the net to the front because they were too focused on what they should be doing instead of reacting to what was in front of them. This is how a team’s greatest strength becomes a weakness.
Hurricanes Post-Mortem
The thing about going into the playoffs with realistic expectations & surpassing them is you forget how much elimination day sucks. This one was particularly frustrating because so many things went wrong this year, yet the team got back to the Conference Final for the first time since Brind’Amour’s first season as coach. I just felt like everyone was waiting for the crash instead of enjoying the ride. Granted, this is just how sports fandom works now and the NHL has devalued the regular season to the point where most of the playoffs are decided by Christmas.
This year made me think of the 2011-12 season a lot. It was my first season really following the team closely & while they weren’t very good, they were an escape from what was a stressful year for me personally. The wins were rare, but they were special even if the playoffs were unrealistic. I didn’t think it would be Year 3 of a decade-long drought, but things have reversed course now. Both with the Hurricanes becoming a perrenial playoff team & the gameday commentary being more of an annoyance than an escape for me. Not that I expect everyone to be positive about everything because they’re a flawed team & the online portion of the fanbase has grown from the small pocket of Twitter it was back then.
Eventually you learn to not give your two cents on everything and try to convince everyone that the sky isn’t falling after a tough loss. I just wish I followed that advice more instead of paying so much attention to the negative side of the fanbase because this was a pretty cool season. They took a risk on Brent Burns & it paid off, Stefan Noesen & Jalen Chatfield became NHLers out of training camp, Brady Skjei flirted with a franchise record season for goals from a defenseman, Jordan Martinook had an incredible rebound season after being placed on waivers in October, scoring one of the team’s eight (!) hat tricks this year. Shayne Gostisbehere was one of my favorite players to watch when he was a Flyer & it was cool to see him in a Canes uniform. Lots of cool things happen when winning is the norm, even if that’s just the minimum of what we expect from them now. As a fan, the season is always what you make of it.