When it comes to giving up Grade A chances, Hurricanes get an F
Just like Roy Williams had a premonition Saturday’s North Carolina basketball debacle was coming when he spoke to his already-listless team before the game, Rod Brind’Amour seemed to sense a vision of the future Sunday afternoon.
A few hours before the game, in his shirtsleeves in the frigid wind tunnel-slash-hallway outside the Carolina Hurricanes’ dressing room, the coach rehashed his No. 1 gripe with his team, a group that has done so much well at the halfway mark of the season while being unable to shake at least one persistent bad habit.
“At times we give up too many of the good looks,” Brind’Amour said. “We don’t give up a lot in general, overall. I don’t know what our shot totals are per game, but I know they’re pretty low in the league. It’s just the Grade A’s we’re giving up at times, that’s what we’ve got to cut back on. That’s probably been our Achilles’ heel this year. We give up too many two-on-ones, the Grade A variety. Certainly not a lot of chances, but too many good ones.”
The Hurricanes then went out and gave up two Grade A chances in the first five minutes against the Tampa Bay Lightning, both of which ended up behind Petr Mrazek. Just like that, the Hurricanes were back to .500 on this critical seven-game homestand with a 3-1 loss to the Lightning.
On the first, the puck hopped over Dougie Hamilton’s stick at the offensive blue line, and the Hurricanes were never able to get their defensive coverage sorted out at the other end. On the second, Hamilton turned the puck over under pressure while skating out from behind his net on a play everyone seemed to believe was icing, and Steven Stamkos made it 2-0.
Two shots. Two Grade A chances. Two goals. And against a team that came in having won six in a row after winning in Canada late Saturday night, the two points were off the table quickly
“We gave them everything they got to start the game,” Jaccob Slavin said.
Poor Mrazek couldn’t do much about either, let alone the third, and made a point-blank power-play save on Brayden Point to keep things from being any worse. There’s no question the Hurricanes need better, more consistent goaltending from Mrazek and James Reimer — that’s a given — but they don’t do their goalies any favors either. The Hurricanes have terrific analytics in part because they don’t give up many shots, but too often the ones they do give up are terrific chances.
What they almost unfailingly restrict in quantity, they are prone to giving up in quality. Brind’Amour knows that better than anybody.
The Hurricanes have had enough problems trying to get their blue line settled as they wait for (hope for?) Jake Gardiner to settle in, but the situation has become increasingly untenable. They went a month without giving up four or more goals and have done it five times in the past seven games. The Hurricanes are slowly trying to scrape together the salary cap room to add a defenseman at the trade deadline, but there’s a lot of hockey still to be played before reinforcements arrive, if they even do.
The Hurricanes certainly wanted to narrow the enormous plus-minus gap between Hamilton (who came into the game tops among NHL defensemen at plus-31) and Gardiner (a staggering minus-21), but a minus-3 from Hamilton (on a night nobody was very good) probably isn’t the way to go about it.
Losing six of their last eight doesn’t change the fact it was a very good first half for the Hurricanes. Only the 2006 team had a better 41-game record than this one, and this one had a better goal differential. There’s every opportunity for the Hurricanes to continue to improve as well, if the goaltending can jump up a notch and if Erik Haula continues to recover from his knee issues and if five-goal Nino Niederreiter ever starts scoring again. But this was unacceptable Sunday, right from the start.
“Probably the first time I can say all year that we had nothing,” Brind’Amour said.
At times, it seems like an absolute grind for the Hurricanes to score, especially on the nights when they dominate the shot totals. (Sunday wasn’t one of those.) They can’t make it this easy for the other team.
This story was originally published January 5, 2020 at 8:09 PM.
