Have the Carolina Hurricanes become too top heavy?

The Carolina Hurricanes had three players in the point per game range roughly this season, but only had 5 forwards pass the 30 point plateau.

For years the major knock with the Carolina Hurricanes has been that the high-end scoring is just non-existent. It’s been 1 or 2 top players and mainly a lot of depth help. Carolina’s last point per game producer came in the prime of Eric Staal‘s career. He was traded some years ago. It’s been a while. Yet with three players coming close this year, have the Canes overdone the high-end talent?

With the likes of Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, and Andrei Svechnikov, Carolina’s forward core bolsters one of the deadliest trios in the NHL.  All three of the talented trio surpassed the 60 point plateau in the 68 games of the current season that have been played to this point. Yet, Carolina’s offensive struggles are continuous.

Despite the likes of Aho being on pace for 45 goals over the course of an 82 game season, Carolina ranked 15th across the NHL in goals for. 14 other teams outscored the Hurricanes. If this does not highlight the need for forward help this off-season, I do not know what does. It highlights that even with these elite caliber players, the Carolina Hurricanes are having trouble scoring.

When you have Aho, Svechnikov, and Teravainen and cannot place top 10 in scoring, it highlights depth issues and this is very true in the case of the Carolina Hurricanes. Even with 3 players in roughly the point per game range, Carolina only had 3 forwards pass the 40 point mark. Martin Necas was the next closest forward with 38, and he was the only other forward to pass 30 points.

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So what’s wrong with the Carolina Hurricanes attack? How can they carry these three top-quality forwards and still not find themselves in a high-end of the team scoring totals? The answer is simple, there’s no depth scoring. Carolina has built up an over-reliance on the Finnish cherubs and Svechnikov, and the rest of the forward core is firing blanks.

Necas is an exception because he is still young and his game is progressing, but someone like Nino Niederreiter just isn’t forgivable. He put up 26 goals last year and didn’t hit the 30 point mark in 67 games. That is a brutal season. That just sums up the depth issues the Hurricanes have. Looking up and down the bottom 9, it’s the story everywhere.

So, the Carolina Hurricanes need depth help. They need someone to come in who can help put up goals and points when the big three cannot. Is there a real in-house option right now? There’s certainly no names that stand out to me as I look through. So it’s something that has to be fixed either through trade or free agency.

Question for Cardiac Cane readers: Who should the Hurricanes target to fix their scoring woes outside the SAT line?