Carolina Hurricanes Must Stick to Rebuild Despite Offensive Breakout
By Brett Finger
The Carolina Hurricanes have had an unprecedented offensive breakout over the past week, but they must remain realistic and stick to the plan in place.
The past week and two days of Carolina Hurricanes hockey has been incredibly entertaining to watch, and the breakout on offense provides a lot of optimism for this team’s future.
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The club has netted 23 goals over their last 5 games, emerging as the hottest scoring team in the NHL. Since the beginning of this offensive surge, the Hurricanes are 4-1-0, and in their only lost, they came all the way back from a 5-1 deficit in the 3rd period against the Dallas Stars before giving up a goal in the final 20 seconds of regulation time.
Today, the Carolina Hurricanes are 13th in the Eastern Conference, just 6 points out of a playoff spot. Tuesday’s game will be crucial as they take on the Philadelphia Flyers, a team that sits just one spot above the Canes in the standings.
This new-found success has been great to see, but even though this team now is in a much better scenario in the playoff picture than they were about a month ago, they must remain realistic and stick to the plan.
Back when Jim Rutherford was the general manager of the Canes, he was very willing to make big deals in order to force the team to the playoffs. As we saw, this tactic very rarely worked, especially after the 2009 playoff run.
He tried to shorten the rebuild by signing players to absurd contracts and making trades for big-name players that gave up quality assets for their future. Not only did he fail to shorten the rebuild, he elongated it exponentially due to the organization’s lack of talent in the system.
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Thankfully, that is no longer the case, and new management headed by Ron Francis is in control. I have all the faith in the world in the new regime, and they appear to be staying strong on their views of the team and the rebuild.
A lot of things could be influenced by success here as we enter the mid-way section of the 2015-2016 season, including the future of guys like Eric Staal, Ron Hainsey, Cam Ward, and others.
The Hurricanes need to continue to evaluate not what is best for this season, but what is best for this team 2-3 years down the line. They can’t get blinded by recent success, and they can’t let it influence what they do with Eric Staal, in particular.
If anything, this recent success is more reason to look into moving on from the Staal Era. Over the last 5 games, Staal has 4 points, which is certainly good to see, but when you take a closer look, he has chipped in on 17% of Carolina’s goals.
Now, let’s look at other playes on the Hurricanes. Victor Rask has chipped, with with either a goal or an assist, on 30% of their goals over the last 5 games. Justin Faulk and Jeff Skinner also come in at 30%, Elias Lindholm and Andrej Nestrasil both come in at 26%, and Jordan Staal comes in at a modest 13%.
So, Eric Staal is no longer carrying this offense, and while it’s true that things aren’t as black and white when it comes to offensive production, watching this team play has convinced me that they can continue on without his presence, especially if it means getting back quality young players in return. There’s no longer a huge reliance on the captain.
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All that to say that the Carolina Hurricanes need to stick to the game plan. They can’t let recent success factor in too much to their big picture decision making. The offense they have been producing as of late isn’t realistically sustainable, and I think Ron Francis knows this.