The Carolina Hurricanes are one of the least successful franchises in NHL history, with the third-lowest winning percentage of the expansion period. Only the Arizona Coyotes and the California Golden Seals / Cleveland Barons have become fewer, the latter of which no longer exists. In addition to a lone Stanley Cup win in 2005-06 – an arguably exceptional performance for any franchise, let alone one of the league’s all-time highs – and a failed Stanley Cup Final appearance four years earlier, the r not been much cause for celebration since the Hurricanes in Raleigh blew. But recent evidence suggests the Hurricanes may change course.
Take, for example, the tail end of last season. Carolina won its last three games of the regular season to secure a wild card bid in the playoffs and then went on to lead the hockey world with an opening, resounding win over defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals. The Canes then swept the New York Islanders en route to an unlikely Eastern Conference berth, and if they were not in a hot Boston Bruins team, they might have reached their third Stanley Cup Final.
That, of course, did not have to be the case. The Bruins cut and made the Canes aside. But the relative postseason success was a glimmer of hope for a franchise that had been out of the playoffs for a decade – and one that practiced in the 2019-20 season.
This time, the Canes easily qualified for the extended playoffs of Stanley Cup. They had the ninth-best points percentage of the league when the game stopped in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the underlying picture was not bad either. In terms of Hockey-Refefrence.com’s Simple Rating System (SRS), which estimates the strength of each team in the NHL, the Canes were the sixth strongest team in the league in 2019-20, tied with the Capitals.
A season ago, SRS ranked the Canes as the 13th best team in the league, just good enough to sneak into the playoffs and cause some chaos. This season, the Canes really belong, as they prove with an extensive sweep of the New York Rangers in the opening round of the extended playoffs.
Was that her dominance of the opening round an illusion, or can Carolina take last season’s success a step further and make it to the Stanley Cup Final? If it’s hoping for Cup glory, Carolina will now have to do what they certainly could not do last season: defeat the Bruins in a seven-game series. But that might not be an impossible task.
The Bruins were the best NHL team in both points percentage and SRS before the league stopped playing in March, but they have stepped out of the blocks since the restart. Boston lost each of its three round robin games, scoring a total of four goals in the process, none of which were scored by its famous “Perfection Line” from Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak. (The line – which was one of the best in the league, at one point at a historic scoring pace – generated a single point in their three games since the restart.) And although three games is a small sample, the Bruins uncharacteristically leaked to the back, with 0.61 more goals per game in the round robin, than they did in the regular season. If the Canes can figure out how the top line of Boston can continue to pollute and attack its sudden pedestrian guard, then they can repeat their roles as agents of chaos in the East.
But even if they are able to summon the Bruins, Karolina will not go far without sorting out her ruling problems. I wrote in 2019 that there is a certain mystique attached to the concept of the hot goalie in the NHL playoffs. Saving percentage affects a higher percentage of a team’s success than any other factor, so good playoff goaltending is crucial to a team’s success (or lack thereof) in the playoffs. But goals ‘hardly’ get ‘high’ in the playoffs, and good playoff goaltending is usually a function of good regular season goaltending that spends in the playoffs. Unfortunately for Carolina, her direction in the regular season was at least normal.
Starter Petr Mrázek posted a league-average .905 saving percentage, and his marked goals scored above average (GSAA) stood in the red. Backup James Reimer, who started 14 fewer games than Mrázek, had significantly better numbers, but did not shed light on the league – including his save percentage of .914 tied for 27th and his GSAA mark of 3.38 at 26th. Indeed, the Carolina Goaltenders – a cohort that includes David Ayres, an amateur hockey player who was named in action as an emergency backup in a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and who famously saves eight on his way to winning the victory for the Canes – combined for a .906 saving percentage, just a smidge better than league average.
It’s rare to see a team win the Stanley Cup after a regular season of poor goalie play. If the Canes are going to make a run this summer, they will need better than league-average play from their goaltenders. Mrázek kept the starter’s mantle in the regular season, but Carolina might consider giving Reimer, whose regular season numbers were superior, the bulk of the workload in the playoffs. Or maybe they should just give Ayres a call and see what he does.
