So you want a track meet where we pair Jeff Skinner, Teuvo Teravainen, Sebastian Aho against Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Tyler Johnson?
How is that better?
And yes, this is more than a one-off gameplan because easily 75% of the teams we face can win that track meet against us. We flat out don’t have the forward talent to play that way. Peters probably wishes we did more than anyone, because he has one hell of a tall order trying to get this group over the hump without any significant new scoring talent year-over-year.
They have gone into the 3rd period 5 out of 7 games this year with a 0 or a 1 on the board. The two exceptions being the first game of the year and a skidding Edmonton team that was playing their backup.
It doesn't matter if the grinding game leads to the opposition to only score 2 goals a night average if you can't manage 2 average. And this has been a consistent problem with Peters' teams. At ES they can only score when the opposition goes into prevent. Thank Tampa for taking a page out of the Panthers playbook. But gunking up the game clearly Pejorative Slurs an already stagnant offense.
Do I want a shoot out with Tampa? No, their offense is twice ours, and they're hot right now. Do I want a shoot out with Dallas? Hell no. In light of that, I'm not concerned and see the logic behind the gunk game these past two games. So fine, let's gunk up the game and pray to the Hockey Gods that the bounces go the way we want for once.
But (I suck at being clear, so here I'm arguing against you assertion that the Hurricanes must play this way all the time) factoring in Slavin erasing the oppositions top threat, is it really so ludicrous to suggest that the roster, which has speed and passing/skating defensemen
but no Ryan Murphy 
but lacks size and cyclers (outside of 4th line, you go guys!), might be better suited for trying to create scoring chances in transition than grinding it out along the boards? That doing this will drastically open up their team against most offenses to such a degree that the trade off is moot at best? I don't agree with that. The Hurricanes have defensemen who can skate and are excellent in transition and in any case, opening up their defense is a moot point when they've lost the game once the opponent scores twice.
This team blows at creating scoring chances. Here is a way they can create more scoring chances. Yes, I am well aware of why they don't do that but if this offensive pattern really is a pattern, the Hurricanes are in trouble and it's valid to question possible ways to fix that which don't include panic moves or miraculous conceptions of elite forwards.
It’s worth scrutiny because it’s a picture-perfect example of changing Hanifin’s partner only to see the new partner get burned trying to cover for him.
And therefore a picture perfect example of why changing up the pairings isn’t really the solution to Hanifin. The solution is to find him a babysitter and revisit his progress when he’s old enough to book a hotel room legally.
See, my point is more that using a goal from that context (4 seconds left of a blowout) to draw any kind of conclusion isn't really worthwhile. I guess I just have fond memories when Ruutu was a running joke because of this.
Not that I disagree with your conclusion. Until Hanifin gets better it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Which is the same thing with line configurations. Juggling the lines isn't going to fix the root problem of a lack of forward talent.
(You really notice that when you go into opposing GDT's after Hurricane victories and the opposing fans are vituperatively arguing about whether such-and-such third liner on the second line in place of such-and-such third liner on the second line was the difference in this close 2 goal loss)
The Hurricanes are in trouble. We cannot survive Aho and Lindholm and Rask and Turbo all falling through the basement floor. Currently we have one player in the lineup who has broken the 60 point barrier this decade, and only one other player who has scored more than 50 points in any year of his career. The assumption was that we would be getting that kind of scoring from young guys starting around now. If the four of them are all in for a down season, we are going to have an abysmal year. There's really no way around it. They capital-n Need to step up starting ASAP before we get into a hole we can't get out of.
