Carolina Hurricanes Stat Review: They Failed To Get A Bigger Boat

In the last game of a California road trip against San Jose Sharks, the Carolina Hurricanes left empty-handed despite a solid game

Against San Jose last night, the Carolina Hurricanes looked to emerge from a road trip for the first time this season with a winning record. With the heartbreaking loss to Anaheim, fans saw this game as a chance to come back home on a positive note. Well, the Sharks and some say the refs, had different plans for the Canes. Still, the Canes played a great game against one of the best teams in the league. Sometimes the bounces just don’t go your way. Feels like I’ve typed that a lot this year. *Recites “Trust the Process” 100 times* . Okay, I have reached Cane’s zen let’s look at the stats.

Team Shots and Corsi For

San Jose was a little better in 5v5 shots in the first period, but every other measure the Hurricanes outplayed them. Some of this is score effects since the Sharks led for most of the game, but there were times the Hurricanes really brought it. Jeff Skinner alone had over ten shots, and the team as a whole looked very dangerous. Again Carolina shows they can hang with a more talented team, and even outplay them.

Corsi Differential

The key thing here is the return of Slavin and Pesce to their usual location near the top of the Corsi differential chart. Despite the poor play of Hainsey on the first goal, him and Faulk also find themselves on the plus side for two games in a row. One weird stat is Victor Rask finds himself a plus, yet his linemates of McGinn and Di Giuseppe are negatives. If I recall this stems from Peters mixing the lines at the end of the game. The line of Rask, Skinner, and Ryan created a lot of chances for the team in the last five minutes of the third.

The fourth line though finally hit a wall on their solid Corsi play. Every single member was negative this game along with the other’s against Anaheim and L. A. The fourth line is a

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liability to this team on the road. Since I’ve been doing these graphs, they’ve really only played well when Peters can get the matchups he wants. Instead of all this focus on getting another top line player, the fourth line would be the quickest and easiest to improve. Instead of playing sub 50 CF% players like McClement and Nordstrom, get somebody who can play hockey. It can’t be that hard to improve on replacement level players and the fact that Francis hasn’t, says a lot about where the team is on his playoffs timeline.

Corsi and xG plots

Jeff Skinner shows once again on these graphs why he’s the best player on the team. I saw someone on twitter saying he needs to be more consistent. The fact is his longest streak without a point is two games, and only has happened twice. I mean it would be nicer if he scored more, but his play even when he doesn’t score like this game is superb.

One other thing is the emergence of Derek Ryan in the last two games. Sure he’s been playing great, but he’s not going to be a solution long term. This is the role they signed him for: to fill in during an injury and not be horrible. He’s a great depth player, and he’s got the hot hand. The only way he sticks long term at center will be if the Hurricanes decide to sit McClement and Peters and company just don’t seem to want to do that.

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