GDT: Canes @ Rangers 3/11 7PM...If A Canes Game Takes Place...

[caniac315]

Are we simply destined to be a mediocre team? How in the hell did we ever win the Cup?

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

The only way the Canes can move Ward is to a colossal moron who strikes out in FA to fill their massive hole in net. This is where we pray for Mike Gillis to not be fired.

fixed.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Are we simply destined to be a mediocre team? How in the hell did we ever win the Cup?

Lavi was one of the first to take advantage of the new rule changes brought on after the lockout. That helped a great regular season. Then in the playoffs, ironically, it was our PP that led the way.

Well, that and Cam Ward.

 

[golfpro827]

Are we simply destined to be a mediocre team? How in the hell did we ever win the Cup?

Lavi should have won the Jack Adams that year. He figured out a way to win in the new rules.

But beyond that, you had the 4 things you need to win a playoff series.

1. Great goaltending (Ward
2. A dominate line (Staal line)
3. A dominate player (Brind'Amor)

 

[Anton Babchuk]

staal line wasn't dominant at all in the playoffs. they had trouble generating anything at even strength. cullen, staal, and recchi combined for just 9 ES goals in the playoffs. it was the stillman-brind'amour-williams like that was dominant, scoring 17 ES goals and shutting down the other team's top players.

 

[rocky7]

Semin is all three of those.

What does Semin do in our PP breakout? Stands stationary at the far blue while a defenseman slowly S-curves his way up the ice. We don't just allow teams to stand us up at the blue line, we encourage it. And when they do stand up, our only option is to dump the puck in and pursue it with the guys who have been standing completely still at the blue line.

When we manage to get across the blue line with possession (maybe 25% of the time) what's our go-to play for Semin? The cross-slot pass that every video coach in the league has scouted at this point?

What's our go-to play for Skinner? Having him walk out of the corner at a sharp angle and try wristers off the goalie's toes until one deflects in?

What's our go-to play for Eric? Can we even say we have one for a guy who's only scored once? As much flak as I've given him this season, the PP is the difference between his current production and a point-per-game pace. Why is he such a prolific scorer against 5 opponents but can't buy a decent shot against 4?

Sekera has shown unbelievable playmaking skill this year. Liles is a pure puck mover. Murphy is a phenom when he has time and space.

It doesn't add up that this group should be putrid with the man advantage. Whatever Muller envisions on the PP (and it remains unclear exactly what that is), it wastes the skills that this roster offers. In no way am I convinced that this team doesn't have the talent to break 13% on the PP.

for some reason Muller isn't able to get the best out of the personnel. you have to really wonder why that is. is he and other NHL coaches that authoritarian or just too proud and stubborn? no idea what the culture is behind closed doors and in the dressing room. with all these managers, coaches, players and technology, you would think they would have a flippin meeting and figure something out for everyone's sake. get input from everyone and work together to find a solution. it doesn't seem like it should be so difficult.
instead it's, "well the guys are believing and buying into the system and we just gotta get to our game", etc., generic chatter. sheesh, it's just ridiculous sometimes. figure it out already. or...... have everyone pissed off and lose your jobs. everything remained pretty much the same from camp...systems, special teams, guy's games. very little adjustment other than extensive line shuffling. I just don't get how all these guys can't figure something out.

 

[Ole Gil]

I think people forget how good at moving the puck Whitney and Stillman were. Semin can make some nice passes, and the occasional great play. But in the end, he's pretty sloppy with the puck, just like Staal and Skinner.

I heard somewhere in our history, someone said you play an aggressive PK, and make them make 3 perfect passes to beat you. Who on this team is going to be a part of 3 perfect passes?

 

[Ole Gil]

Muller had very high levels of success with the Montreal PP.
Lavi had a top 5 PP in Philly.

Both stunk in Carolina.

I think maybe this is where JR deserves the most blame. It seems like he's assembled a group of talented players with little thought to how they fit together, thrown them out on the ice, and said "Coach 'em up!" But the parts don't fit. They don't make a good PP. They don't make 3 good lines. There are only so many ways you can switch people around and try to stick them together.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

That's what I've been trying to remember for the last 10 minutes

I was a bit worried nobody would get it.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Muller had very high levels of success with the Montreal PP.
Lavi had a top 5 PP in Philly.

Both stunk in Carolina.

I think maybe this is where JR deserves the most blame.

Here is a list of skaters that the current team has in common with Lavi's team:

Eric Staal
Patrick Dwyer


Lavi coached a top-10 PP here in 2008. Staal was top-10 in the league in PP goals in 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

So unless you're saying Patrick Dwyer is the problem, I'm inclined to think this is not a personnel issue. We have completely changed over the players on this team since Lavi's day and added a lot of offensive talent in the past two seasons. Yet the PP number isn't changing.

Also: it's pretty simple to just look at what they're doing on the ice and see that the system doesn't work, regardless of who is out there trying to execute it. Either it is a poorly designed system, or the players flat-out don't understand it -- either way, it's Muller's problem as the head coach.

 

[DaveG]

Muller had very high levels of success with the Montreal PP.
Lavi had a top 5 PP in Philly.

Both stunk in Carolina.

I think maybe this is where JR deserves the most blame. It seems like he's assembled a group of talented players with little thought to how they fit together, thrown them out on the ice, and said "Coach 'em up!" But the parts don't fit. They don't make a good PP. They don't make 3 good lines. There are only so many ways you can switch people around and try to stick them together.

Maybe a Montreal fan knows on this one for sure, but pretty sure Kirk ran the PK, not the PP in Montreal.

 

[nobuddy]

it's highly, highly unlikely unless somehow all of those extra goals came in clutch situations *and* the team was able to further capitalize and do something with said goal (as we've seeing twice lately, tying a game late in the third doesn't always translate to a point). what's more likely is that many of those goals have no effect on the outcome of the game, for instance coming in a game that was already blowout win or a blowout loss. everyone seems to assume that even a mediocre powerplay is going to come up with clutch goals all the time.

also, the team is one of the worst 5-on-5 and PK teams in the league. maybe if they didn't suck at *everything* they'd be in the playoffs. i don't get the totally disproportionate powerplay discussion. this is a bad team.

personally, i think the situation with the terrible powerplay is really for the best. i think it's much better for the team to suck and for real changes to be made than for a terrible 5-on-5 team, terrible possession team, terrible PK team, terrible shootout team to fluke its way to 8th place by scoring powerplay goals and convince old senile rutherford that he likes his group.

Except we're not a terrible possession team. We're pretty average to above average in that regard. Our even strength Corsi is 12th in the league, better than Washington, Montreal, Anaheim, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Columbus, and Tampa.

Our powerplay Corsi is 18th in the league. Our shorthanded Corsi is 1st in the league.

However, our shorthanded save percentage is 24th in the league, and our powerplay shooting percentage is 28th in the league. Our even strength PDO is 23rd.

So to compare possession numbers to actual puck in net result numbers we are
EV: 12th, 23rd
PP: 18th, 28th
SH: 1st, 24th

To glean anything from these, we'd have to compare the SH%, SV%, PDO numbers to the other situations.

We are 16th in the league in even strength SV% with a mark of .924, but on the penalty kill we sink to 24th and a .867 (16th is .878). So our goalies at even strength are the 16th best in the league, but 24th best on the penalty kill. It's hard to say that means we, as a team, are bad on the penalty kill when we're the best in the league at scoring short handed goals and the best in the league at keeping chances to a reasonable proportion. So this points to one of two things. Either Ward/Khudobin/Peters are just all bad on the penalty kill, or we've been rather unlucky in that regard.

Now the power play. At even strength, we are 12th in CF% and 27th in SH%. On the power play, we are 18th in CF% and 28th in SH%. So we, empirically, have a higher drop off in play from even strength to powerplay when compared to other teams around the league. This points to one of two things. Either we are really really bad at generating quality scoring chances, as evidenced by the drop off from shot attempts to how many of those shot attempts actually go in, or we've been rather unlucky in that regard.



TL;DR: We are a top 15 team in the league at even strength by all possession metrics. Corsi (12), Fenwick (15), and plain old shots on goal (14). However, despite the good possession numbers, we are 23rd in the league in GF%. We are 16th in ES SV%. The only area in which we fall short of being a playoff caliber team is SH%, where we are 27th in the league. We either: need to generate higher quality chances, need to get forwards who are better finishers, or have been rather unlucky when it comes to finishing chances this year.

 

[What the Faulk]

Patrick Dwyer has stolen all the compete level from the powerplay.

 

[AD Skinner]

Not to split hairs, but I think ten goals, depending on when/where they were scored, could be huge. How many one-goal games have we given away in the third? Yeah, that's a lot of what ifs, but assuming those ten goals don't all come in two or three games, I think it could absolutely be worth a few wins. It's not really something worth arguing about though- if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.

 

[nobuddy]

It would appear that this is a trend for this franchise.

2011-2012: CF (21st), FF (23rd), SF (25th), GF (27th)
2012-2013: CF (11th), FF (13th), SF (13th), GF (27th)
2013-2014: CF (12th), FF (15th), SF (14th), GF (23rd)

 

[Anton Babchuk]

the team's possession numbers are inflated by score effects. the team trails a lot and teams tend to outshoot while trailing. see games like against anaheim where the ducks got a 5-0 lead and then quit playing.

if you look at the score-close numbers, the hurricanes drop to 19th in corsi close, 24th in fenwick close and 23rd in shots close (all numbers 5-on-5).

 

[nobuddy]

the team's possession numbers are inflated by score effects. the team trails a lot and teams tend to outshoot while trailing. see games like against anaheim where the ducks got a 5-0 lead and then quit playing.

if you look at the score-close numbers, the hurricanes drop to 19th in corsi close, 24th in fenwick close and 23rd in shots close (all numbers 5-on-5).

I don't understand how this works because we're 8th in CF% when up 1 and 12th in the league in CF% when up 2+. When we're down by 1 we're 24th in the league in CF% and when we're down 2+ we're 6th in the league (while being 28th in SH%, lol luck). We're 18th in the league in CF% when tied.

So really the drag on that number is when we're down 1. When we're leading a close game we're a top 10 possession team, and when we're tied we are slightly below average. So we don't really seem to be benefitting from trailing in the score-close numbers, rather the opposite.

 

[What the Faulk]

Not to split hairs, but I think ten goals, depending on when/where they were scored, could be huge. How many one-goal games have we given away in the third? Yeah, that's a lot of what ifs, but assuming those ten goals don't all come in two or three games, I think it could absolutely be worth a few wins. It's not really something worth arguing about though- if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.

They've only got 6 one-goal losses on the year. Another 9 were lost in OT. So that's 15 of 65 games, or 23% of the season where one more goal would have mattered. At best, that's probably worth 2, maybe 3 points.

 

[Ole Gil]

Maybe a Montreal fan knows on this one for sure, but pretty sure Kirk ran the PK, not the PP in Montreal.

Google'd it. You are correct.

 

[Sens1Canes2]

We have one defenseman on the team for the majority of the year that is capable of running the PP. And, Buffalo fans would have said we're nuts for having him as the #1 option. So, in my humble opinion, there is a personnel problem on the blue line.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

They've only got 6 one-goal losses on the year. Another 9 were lost in OT. So that's 15 of 65 games, or 23% of the season where one more goal would have mattered. At best, that's probably worth 2, maybe 3 points.

It's not as simple as just adding 10 goals to our goal totals right now and calling it a day. There are many consequences of those 10 additional goals from the PP. The timing of those goals would completely change how the game played out beyond that point.

For example, Carolina, like most teams, has an insane winning % when scoring first- 72%. If 5 of those PP goals were the opening of the game where we otherwise would not have scored first, then Carolina will have won 3 out of those 5 games. That's 6 potential points right there out of a mere 5 extra goals at the right time.

 

[What the Faulk]

I realize that. I was just responding to the question about one-goal games. It's an oversimplification, but the point is, 10 goals is not going to make a huge difference in points.

 

[Anton Babchuk]

It's not as simple as just adding 10 goals to our goal totals right now and calling it a day. There are many consequences of those 10 additional goals from the PP. The timing of those goals would completely change how the game played out beyond that point.

For example, Carolina, like most teams, has an insane winning % when scoring first- 72%. If 5 of those PP goals were the opening of the game where we otherwise would not have scored first, then Carolina will have won 3 out of those 5 games. That's 6 potential points right there out of a mere 5 extra goals at the right time.

yeah, but we're talking about a 4.3% boost in powerplay percentage. on average the team would have needed 116 powerplay opportunities in a 0-0 game to generate those extra 5 goals. they've had 228 powerplay opportunities total, so it seems unlikely that over half of them came before any goals were scored (someone else can look it up if they want to).

you're really looking at the absolute best case scenario. 5 goals translating to 6 additional points is fantasy. it's just as likely that those five goals come with the team trailing by four goals late in the third and ending up with them walking away with 0 extra points.

 

[tarheelhockey]

We have one defenseman on the team for the majority of the year that is capable of running the PP. And, Buffalo fans would have said we're nuts for having him as the #1 option. So, in my humble opinion, there is a personnel problem on the blue line.

We don't have a very good set of PP defensemen, but what was the excuse when it was Pitkanen, Corvo, McBain, Murphy, Bergeron, Sanguinetti? A group of nothing BUT offensive specialists had nearly the same results.

 

[Surrounded By Ahos]

I think maybe this is where JR deserves the most blame. It seems like he's assembled a group of talented players with little thought to how they fit together, thrown them out on the ice, and said "Coach 'em up!" But the parts don't fit. They don't make a good PP. They don't make 3 good lines. There are only so many ways you can switch people around and try to stick them together.

Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just… do things