Why so many Hurricanes shots, yet so few goals, in NHL Stanley Cup playoffs?
Few things tend to rankle Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour as much as being asked about having a “shot volume” kind of team.
“What does that mean?” Brind’Amour said Friday at Invisalign Arena during a media scrum.
Meaning that the Canes like to wing a lot of shots toward the net, Brind’Amour was told. Meaning that whether on net, missing the net or having them blocked, the Canes continue to fire away from all angles and have in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Brind’Amour said, perhaps slightly in jest.
“What teams aren’t shooting the puck? I mean, what else are you going to do?”
The Canes had 94 total shooting attempts in Game 1 of their second-round series against the Washington Capitals, winning 2-1 in overtime. They followed with 86 total attempts Thursday in Game 2, with 28 shots on goal, in losing 3-1 to the Caps.
The Caps, in contrast, had 50 total shooting attempts in Game 2 and 21 shots on goal. The Canes had a 24-17 edge in five-on-five shots on goal but did not score, picking up their goal on Shayne Gostisbehere’s power-play strike in the third period.
The teams go at it again Saturday in Game 3 as the deadlocked series goes to the Lenovo Center. The Canes, again, should be looking to load up the puck and fire as much as possible.
“We’ve got to keep doing what we do. If we get off it, we’re lessening our chances to win,” Brind’Amour said. “They’re doing a great job defending the net and you have to take what’s given. And that’s what’s given you.”
The questions, and they have popped up before, are whether the Canes’ shoot-first approach sacrifices quality for quantity and whether they should be better at getting shots on goal.
“You mean more accurate, right?” center Sebastian Aho said Friday, smiling.
“They’ve done a good job blocking shots. That’s a good team that defends well. Their goalie (Logan Thompson) has been playing good. We need to stick with what we’re doing and have a chance to put it in.”
Getting off a lot of shots means a team is spending a lot of time in the offensive zone – always a good thing. Making the Caps, for example, work longer than they want in their defensive zone could both tire someone like 39-year-old Alex Ovechkin and keep him away from where he is most dangerous, in the O-zone.
But the Canes’ goal conversion is low. The Caps have blocked 65 shots in the first two games -- Canes defenseman Sean Walker has had nine blocked -- and the Canes also have missed the net 49 times.
“You’re going to see more blocked shots in the playoffs. There’s just more desperation out there,” Gostisbehere said Friday. “And we’ve probably hit six posts. But we’re not going to change a thing. If it ain’t broken …
“That’s our game. We put pucks on the net, we crash the net, we get traffic.”
That’s how the Canes won Game 1 in overtime. Defenseman Jaccob Slavin got off a shot from the right point through traffic with Seth Jarvis and Jordan Staal screening Thompson, who had the puck go under his right pad.
Brind’Amour said a better stat than shot totals are the scoring chances created, and especially those deemed “high-danger” chances that challenge the goalie to make a quality stop.
The Canes outchanced the Caps, 40-20, in Game 1 and had 19 high-danger chances to Washington’s 13, according to naturalstattrick.com, a hockey analytics site. Often, that’s a winning equation.
“That’s the number,” Brind’Amour said. “It’s not all the other stuff.”
In Game 2, the Canes had a 40-23 advantage in total scoring chances but only 11-10 in high-danger chances. The Caps had a 7-2 edge in high-danger chances in the second period, their best of the series.
Both teams had power-play goals in Game 2, the Canes’ penalty killers beaten for the first time in seven playoff games. The Caps’ goal by defenseman John Carlson early in the third period proved to be the game-winner.
After center Mark Jankowski was injured in Game 1, Brind’Amour inserted Jack Roslovic into the lineup as the fourth-line center for Game 2. Roslovic had some decent offensive looks, played up in the lineup during the game and gave the Canes a right-hand center.
Jankowski is the better defensive center and can kill penalties. Roslovic had 22 goals in the regular season and is a quick-twitch sniper. In what could be a tight-checking, low-scoring series, there’s a choice to be made.
There was no full team practice Friday, but Jankowski was on the ice at Invisalign Arena working out with the extras. He could be available for Game 3.
“In a tight series when you’re looking for somebody who, when he gets that chance on his stick, can he put it in the net, ‘Rosy’ is probably one of our better players at that,” Brind’Amour said.
Overall, Brind’Amour came away generally pleased with how his team handled the two games in Washington, DC, coming back to Raleigh with a road win and 1-1 split.
“We can obviously be a little better but I liked how we played,” BrindAmour said. “Obviously we want to get more action around the net.”
Meaning a high volume of shots from the Canes, again.
“That’s our style,” Gostisbehere said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all year.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2025 at 3:39 PM.
