No reason for panic over slumping Hurricanes, but some reason for concern
Under any circumstances, at any time of year, losing to the Ottawa Senators is just cause for a closed-door team meeting followed by a yoga retreat in Big Sur. The soul, at that point, needs all the searching it can get.
Victimized for the sad-sack Sens’ fifth win in 21 games, the Carolina Hurricanes find themselves in an odd position. They’re doing so many of the right things and, suddenly, over and over again, not getting the right results. There is no reason for panic. There is some reason for concern.
After Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Senators, the Hurricanes have three points from their past six games, that 9-0-0 start is gaining a sepia tinge and a long list of star players have been as absent from the scoresheet as the Hurricanes were from PNC Arena over the past few weeks.
“It’s a tough time right now, mentally,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Nothing’s going our way. Let’s be frank. Nothing’s going our way. No one is going to feel sorry for us. We’re not asking for that.”
For the second straight game, the Hurricanes more than doubled their opponents in shots without a point to show for it. After digging a 2-0 hole, Teuvo Teravainen and Andrei Svechnikov scored 105 seconds apart in the third period to put the Hurricanes on even footing, only to give up the game-winner 19 seconds later. Martin Necas kicked one Ottawa goal past Antti Raanta, Ian Cole kicked in another and that was that.
In the big picture, in the long run, the Hurricanes are going to win more games than they lose with a 49-20 advantage in shots on goal, and quality shots, not the Bill Peters-era perimeter barrage. The process is there. The results are not.
“It’s a tough way to lose,” Raanta said, “when you dominate a game and you end up losing 3-2.”
The Hurricanes have arrived at the doldrums of the season, and the issue isn’t so much how they got there — there’s not a lot of mystery about it - but how they get out.
Given the length and distance of the Hurricanes’ recent road trip — six games in 11 days, from Atlantic to Pacific and back again, with a quick jaunt to Dallas tacked on after a lone home game like a coda — and the COVID outbreak that struck down first Ethan Bear and then Brett Pesce and Tony DeAngelo, this is an obvious spot on the schedule for a swoon.
But to say that this is a solvable problem doesn’t mean it will solve itself. The old bit about your best players being your best players has stuck around for a reason. The Hurricanes need their big dogs to eat. Teravainen’s goal was his second in the past 20 games. Svechnikov’s was his second in 15. Necas has one goal in nine games. Vincent Trocheck, one in 12. Jordan Staal, none in 15. The power play converted for the first time in eight games, ending an 0-for-21 skid.
It’s not like they’re not getting chances. They’re getting them in bunches. There’s no deficit of effort or opportunity. Svechnikov, who was excellent Thursday, zinged one off the post at the end of the first period and Teravainen had a chance to finish a four-on-two break in the second only for his stick to shatter in his hands, the same kind of misfires that cost the Hurricanes dearly in Dallas on Tuesday when they had a 75-35 advantage in shot attempts and somehow lost 4-1.
The Hurricanes can carry a few of those guys for a while, especially with Jesperi Kotkaniemi rounding into form — right about the time you’d expect it, for a player transitioning to a new team and city and role and system and country — and the youthful energy Seth Jarvis has provided. But there’s a limit to it, and this is it.
It doesn’t help that the goalie on a sudden heater for the worst team in the NHL is a guy who played three games for the Hurricanes in two separate stints with the franchise. Anton Forsberg, Hurricanes legend. It took the Hurricanes 43 shots to get one past Forsberg, and it wasn’t too late as it turned out, but it was too little.
“At the beginning of the year we won so many games,” Svechnikov said. “Everything for us, it’s going to come. We just have to wait, wait, wait and do the same things.”
Svechnikov is right: The Hurricanes are a better team than this. This too shall pass. Still, this two-game set against a pair of bottom-feeders, Ottawa and the Buffalo Sabres, was supposed to be a chance to get their minds and hands right ahead of another brutal road trip, a four-game, six-day swing through western Canada.
In the NHL, where the freebie point for an overtime loss keeps the standings artificially compressed, it doesn’t take much for a short-term slump to have long-term consequences.
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 10:45 PM with the headline "No reason for panic over slumping Hurricanes, but some reason for concern."
