Hurricanes: Takeaways From Comeback Victory over Arizona Coyotes

Defense Still Needs Tightening Up

The Carolina Hurricanes defense excels at two things, limiting shots taken by the opponent and snuffing out odd man rushes. Last night they did plenty of both. Their biggest problem is odd-man offensive creation on the few high quality shots they do allow.

Let me explain.

While it is difficult for opponents to score on the more than a few generated odd man rushes on the Carolina Hurricanes net, they seem to find themselves with numbers in the right positions once an offensive pattern has been set up inside the zone. Too often then not, a defender is caught out of position and the opponent can simply park by the net and slam a goal in from the blue paint.

Take a look above at the second goal scored by Coyotes’ Christian Dvorak. If that goal looks familiar it is because this was exactly the same way the Blues opened up the scoring against Petr Mrazek on Tuesday Night.

Dvorak, with the puck on his stick he is on the blue paint in front of Reimer with not a single Hurricane within a nautical mile of him. Not only does he take a shot, but he finds the time to clean up the rebound and score the second goal of the night well before any defender can figure out what is happening.

This style of defense, if you can even call it that, is simply unsustainable. Rod Brind’amour needs to address this if the Hurricanes want to establish themselves as a playoff team moving forward.