I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about the whole Alexander Nikishin situation because everything seems pretty cut and dry. He needs a new contract and while the Hurricanes have the cap space for him, salaries have ballooned over the past three months. He was going to ask for a lot even if Zeev Buium didn’t get a cap hit north of $9 mil. from the Canucks, but that definitely threw a monkey wrench into things if the plan was to bridge him & kick the long-term contract down the road ala Martin Necas.

You’re paying for potential now more than ever & Nikishin might have the most working in his favor here purely from a small sample size & eye test perspective. He is already in his mid 20’s with a few years of pro hockey in under his belt in the KHL and has an eye-popping highlight reel with the explosive nature of his game. Between the big hits, the hyper beam slapshot from the point and looking like he was shot out of cannon when on his first couple of strides, he might be the ideal defenseman to fans based on playing style alone. There was also a path to him taking over some of Jaccob Slavin’s minutes as he gets more acclimated to the NHL and Slavin enters the twilight of his career.

Then the price to keep him went from a high ask to blank check, the Bowen Byram deal starting a domino effect of teams signing young, relatively unproven defensemen to monstrous, long-term deals with the anticipation of the salary cap rising. The Hurricanes were in somewhat of an awkward spot with Nikishin to begin with just from K’Andre Miller & Jaccob Slavin holding down the top two LD spots on the depth chart, although that’s not a concrete thing. Slavin’s injury forced Nikshin into the top four and we’ve seen him & Shayne Gostisbehere flip which sides they play on when they’re together. That said, when everyone is healthy (like they were for most of the playoffs) Nikishin was the 3LD, deployed heavily in the offensive zone and it was rare to see him out there late in games unless they were pushing for offense.

This is probably another hang-up in contract talks and why there’s talk of Nikishin wanting a change of scenery. If he’s patient, I think he becomes a regular in the top-four (or even the top-pair) as an offensive threat with a physical presence. Most of this hinges on how Slavin looks in his 30’s, as he’s settled into a more defensive-oriented role that allows Ghost/Nikishin to crush it on the third pair. They also had Slavin’s minutes managed last season as he was recovering from surgery & Nikishin probably sees that he’s stuck in third pair role if Slavin stays healthy (as he has for most of his career). It’s also worth mentioning that Nikishin was brought in on a two-year deal before Miller was added & blossomed into the 1LD spot on what is a steal of a contract at only $7.5 mil. Things can change quick, though and this Canes squad is a prime example of that.

This leads us back to the crux of this whole thing:

• Nikishin needs a new contract and this is his opportunity to get paid a lot of money.

• As of this moment, he is the Hurricanes 3LD and the team doesn’t want to pay him $9+ mil. to play on the third pair if they don’t have to. There were at least four other defensemen they called up from Chicago who can play that role, albeit with not as much of an impact as Nikishin brings.

• Nikishin also wants a bigger role and he’s blocked from playing beyond the third pair if the roster stays intact as it is now.

• Trading him is an option, but the contract situation and whatever his demands are make that somewhat complicated because someone else has to give him that deal even if the Hurricanes won’t. Thinkly strictly short-term, I think Carolina would be better off getting a bridge deal done than shipping him off for some picks. His name has been mentioned in a potential trade for a certain goaltender who recently asked to be traded but if the Jets were interested in Nikishin as the centerpiece they would have made that deal by now.

I expect the Canes to wait out this staring contest for awhile. The Necas saga dragged on for a couple years before that turned into a whole trade tree. Jesperi Kotkaniemi is somehow still on the team because they think they can get something for him or having him play 9-10 minutes every few games is better than absorbing a sub-$1 mil. cap hit for eight years. I don’t want to say I have blind faith in the front office because everyone has their faults, but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to pro scouting. That and I’ve mentioned before that I can usually see the vision of what this front office is doing even if I don’t always agree with it. The process usually has some logic behind it.

When it comes to moving on from Nikishin, it’s just risky becuase you don’t know how Slavin will age, you have to replace Gostisbehere after next year anyway & Nikishin’s the one guy in the pipeline that brings a high level of offense at his peak. I felt like taking whatever cap hit he commands would be worth the security & having him on the third pair over a traditional depth player. Although, this was when I thought his cost would be in the Jamie Drysale or Vince Dunn range instead of $9+ mil. Granted, I don’t think I’ve seen any numbers floated around as far as his potential demands go.

The perception of Nikishin & his ceiling is also another driving factor here. Some see a future star being held back by his role, some see a great middle-pair guy with high offensive upside, others see a defensive liability that couldn’t be trusted in the playoffs. The worst case scenario for Carolina is they pay him & he’s the third option. What does Carolina see him as, though? Because if they thought he was a future star they would have had this taken care of by now. Going by stats alone, he had a fine rookie season, but didn’t have the impact that some were hoping. He didn’t live up to the hype had coming over from the KHL, but I wouldn’t say he was a liability, as he’s still learning the NHL and how to communicate on the ice. Some of the end-to-end stuff he loves to do isn’t going to work all the time and he also processes the game differently than his teammates, seeing plays that are open before they develop and it took awhile for everyone to get on the same page.

On the whole, you have a player with a mixed profile.

His on-ice stats aren’t as pretty.

courtesy of Hockeystats.com

The cliff notes version of Nikishin’s rookie year is that he was good offensively, played a limited role away from tougher matchups, but had enough trust to at least play on the second penalty kill & power play units. His shot was a weapon and he used it often. He showed flashes of high-end playmaking, but his passing mainly showed with building the play up in the defensive & neutral zones rather than directly setting up chances. He was also very aggressive when defending his blue line & it came with mixed results. He loves going for the big hit when denying the zone & how Carolina controls the game allowed him to play this way, keeping most of the pucks in front of him and not forcing him to chase as much. He is also hyper-aggressive with pinching in the offensive zone & that’s probably the first thing Carolina fans will tell you about him (outside of the shot & hits).

His poor on-ice defense stats are the elephant in the room here because if you look at his profile & what he does on the ice, the results shouldn’t be that bad, especially against third pair competition. So where does it stem from? His puck-moving stats aren’t that different from the rest of the defense corps. He doesn’t get to a lot of pucks & isn’t relied on much for breakouts, but he makes a good play more often than he turns the puck over. That leaves us with defensive zone coverage, which has admittely been a sore spot with him, but to this degree? It’s also something you can work around if the rest of his game comes around, which is a bigger concern to me long-term.

Let’s say Nikishin’s defensive game never improves, you can work around it if he becomes the dynamic offensive threat that he was advertised two years ago. Having a defenseman like that even in your 3-4 spot is becoming more critical to win, as Carolina saw with Gostisbehere in their Cup run. I like using Shea Theodore as an example of the best-case scenario here, a guy that was mainly an all-offense player in his first few years who eventually became the undisputed top guy after being forced into the role. This isn’t to say Nikishin’s career will go as such, but it’s the vision I see if everything goes right.

The problem is there were a lot of games where I thought Nikishin was just a guy, especially in the playoffs. He was hurt in the playoffs, but his role on the third pair seemed to be “don’t hurt us” rather than “go make an impact.” Even compared to Gostsisbehere, who was very active with killing plays in the defensive zone and led all Canes defensemen in both 5v5 zone entries & scoring chance setups in the post-season. Some of this is just the nature of the game. There’s only one puck to go around and when you’re paired with another offensive-minded player, there’s going to be limited puck touches, especially in a depth role. Still, it felt like there was more meat on the bone with Nikishin. Even in the regular season, his offensive impact was good with the occassional mind-blowing play & great finishing from distance. It just wasn’t the level of game-breaking they might have been hoping for. Certainly not enough to commit a lot of money and years to him after one season when they have other options available, the latter being the key of why contract talks are at a standstill. If the Hurricanes were in a different position & desperate to retain young talent, this article might be about Nikishin making $10 mil. after one season instead of why he isn’t signed.

Unfortunately, there’s only a few Hurricanes games posted in ESPN’s archive right now and none of them were standout games for Nikishin. However, this does give us an idea of what the mundane looks like for him, what his tendencies are and how some potential plays don’t always develop when you’re playing lower in the lineup.

Here’s a couple of clips from the playoffs & it shows some of Nikishin’s tendencies when he’s in the doldroms of the game. He closes in on the Habs forward to kill the rush & makes a 5-foot pass to start a rush the other way. This sets up a chance for Gostisbehere as the trailer & the Canes get another chance after he keeps the puck in at the point. I do like this sequence because these are two mundane plays that led to two pretty good chances for Carolina. Also highlights some of the dynamic him & Ghost had in the post-season even if they were on the third pair. Also kind of hints on what I talked about earlier with Ghost getting the higher quality chances with Nikishin doing the build-up work rather than making a direct impact. Again, there’s only one puck to go around & sometimes you’ll have one guy getting the final touch on these plays.

Picking up where we left off, we see some of the Ghost/Nikishin chemistry at work with Ghost covering the point while Nikishin is playing very deep in the offensive zone. There were some moments in the playoffs where the Canes gave up odd-man rushes from Nikishin pinching or just playing very deep in the offensive zone with his momentum going forward. That’s a common trend in his game & his first few steps cover enough ground to where he can get back most of the time, but it does show the aggressive nature of his game. Here Ghost covers for him & Montreal has to dump the puck in with Nikishin getting back for the retrieval. Demidov beats him tot he puck & Nikishin immediately plays the body on him. This gives Montreal some space to setup what looks like a good chance, but Taylor Hall makes a good read and goes to the front of the net to block the shot after Nikishin erased Demidov. This sets up the counter-attack and the goal from Stankoven. It’s a tertiary play, but it highlights how Nikishin operates in the Canes system, how his teammates read off him & how you can still make an impact even if you’re not the center of attention.

I clipped this sequence to show some of the fluidity with how Carolina’s defensemen play, just becuase I think we get hung up on defensemen playing on their off-side. Nikishin & Ghost switch sides here a couple of times & they’re both constantly in motion in the offensive zone. It’s an element I want the Hurricanes to keep in their game even if Nikishin’s not on the team next year because this is how you get chances if you can’t get to the interior. It’s all about puck movement & creating space for shots, which makes a 30 footer with space & a screen more dangerous than jamming the puck into the goalie’s pads or spamming deflections.

Nothing develops, but watch Nikishin after the faceoff and how he moves after passing the puck off. He tries to setup a give-and-go play up high a couple of times and nothing materalizes because the second & third touches are out of his control. Part of that is this is him getting deployed with the fourth line rather than scoring forwards, as he was in the Montreal clips.

Now here he is behind the Stankoven line & he kickstarts this with a breakout along the wall that quickly gets bumped for a clean entry with, again, Ghost getting the chance as the trailer. His role in the offensive zone is a little different on this sequence, though as he’s the last guy back in the clip with all three forwards doing most of the work on the forecheck. He doesn’t need to pinch because he doesn’t have to and there’s not really an opportunity for him to make a direct impact. However, you can see how the simple plays set this up.

This isn’t to say that he never made a direct impact, becasue he did:

It’s just that hockey has a lot of mundane moments and how you perfom in those is what leads to the higher impact plays like this. As far as Nikishin’s performance is concerned, he was what the Hurricanes needed him to be in his rookie season. I can see why the whole situation is frustrating for fans even coming off a Cup win. You get attached to prospects and what your vision of the team looks like when they reach the mountain top. Nikishin was part of that and there’s still a lot about him that we don’t know & some still see him as the future.

The whole saga has been interesting to watch because it seemed like only a year ago that Nikishin was the future of the team, fans were counting the days to when his KHL contract expired and the Hurricanes could bring him in for the playoffs. His highlight tape looked like nothing we had ever seen before from a Canes prospect. He was the superstar that the Canes supposedly needed. Eventually he got here and things looked a little different, he didn’t take over the game like we thought and the roster also received some upgrades in the form of K’Andre Miller & Nikolaj Ehlers. It allowed them to ease Nikishin back into the lineup while a catastrophic wave of injuries also allowed the team to play him in the 20-22 minute range when he was feeling up to it.

This isn’t to say that he can’t be the future, but the business of the league makes things a little complicated. He’s only going to get so many chances to cash in on his career & he feels like this off-season is the perfect time to do it. Teams are desperate for a young building block & he has all the tools to be that. The Hurricanes can be the team to take that gamble, but they’re also in a position where they don’t have to so I’m not expecting this to get resolved anytime soon. I guess it’s a little disappointing that a player you had so much hope for can now be considered expendable, but this front office always has a few surpises up their sleeve.

In another case of impeccable timing, I wrote about Bowen Byram’s new contract last week and at the time, he was the highest paid defense. This lasted only a few days after Cale Makar signed his new deal, making him the highest paid player in the salary cap era. There was expected sticker shock with this even with the cap rising and player salaries sky-rocketing the past year. The stage was set for Makar to get a massive payday but it’s still kind of jarring to see a player having a $20.4 mil. cap hit in the today’s NHL. Granted this is nothing compared to some of the salaries in other sports.

It’s an extreme jump from Byram’s $12 mil. as the next highest paid defenseman, even seeing where Makar’s camp is coming from. He is the highest scoring defenseman in the league over the past five seasons, has two Norris’ in his back pocket and a Conn Smtythe. If there was ever a situation for him to get a blank check, this was it. Some of his closest peers in Quinn Hughes and Zach Werenski are also at the tail-end of their deals, so this deal was going to be a market reset of another proportion. Add in the Leo Carlsson offer-sheet and this was going to be a market resetting deal of another proportion, that and the fact that teams are banking on the cap continuing to rise.

I feel like I’ve used the word “unprecedented” in all of my posts this summer, but that’s kind of been the theme with these new contracts. The Makar discourse online was interesting, because it’s fair to wonder how good Makar, or any player, has to be to justify a $20+ mil. cap hit. The gap between him and the next closest D is going to change soon with Hughes and Werenski’s paydays coming over the next 24 months, but there were some larger scale questions about Makar that I wanted to dive into.

If you polled 100 hockey fans, more than half of them would say he is the undisputed best defenseman in the league. I might be underselilng that because Makar is easily the most eye-catching defenseman in the league right now. The way he skates, moves the puck and orchestrates in the offensive zone is really unique and something everyone loves to watch. Then there’s the other side that points out the Nathan MacKinnon sized elephant in the room & it shows in some of the isoalted impact stats that are popular now. I’m borrowing one from Jfresh below:

What these stats attempt to do is capture a player’s isolated impact in six areas of the game, compared to replacement level. You can read about the methodology here. The disconnect here is that Makar’s production is head and shoulders above the rest of the league, but his isolated impact stats aren’t quite there. A lot of this stems from the Avs performance on the ice while MacKinnon is out and Makar is on the bench, which doesn’t happen that often as Makar plays over 60% of his 5v5 minutes with MacKinnon. Regardless, over the past three seasons, Makar has shared the ice with MacKinnon for 2572 minutes compared to 1434 minutes without him (all 5v5 by the way). In those minutes, the Avs own 58.1% of the shot attempts, 57.4% of the Expected Goals and 61.3% of the goals. In the minutes with Makar without MacKinnon the ice, Colorado owns only 47.3% of the shots, 48% of the Expected Goals and 52.2% of the goals. MacKinnon without Makar on the ice is at 56.6%, 55.7% and 66.8% in all three of those stats respectively. (all those are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, a wonderful resource that we should all appreciate)

So at face value, this is why some are skeptical of Makar’s greatness and how much of it is MacKinnon driving the bus. There’s been some interesting theories about why this happens, a notable one coming from friend of the newsletter Jack Han. In last year’s Hockey Tactics book, he noted that MacKinnon has a habit of going to the bench after long offensive zone shifts, leaving Makar and others to put out fire drills on counter-attacks. This hasn’t affected Toews’ and his other teammates as extreme as Makar, but it’s an interesting theory.

Admittedly, I’m kind of cynical about this because I’m not sure how much it really matters beyond pissing matches on Twitter when discussing Norris debates or just finding an argument for the sake of it. Makar’s new contract makes it more of a talking point because the Avs have to put the puzzle pieces together more carefully now. Their core is more expensive and they’re getting to the later stages of their contending window with their stars in their late 20’s/early 30’s. They’re going to have to spend more efficiently with the rest of their roster, but the point I keep coming back to is that I don’t think there’s a single Avs fan that cares about Makar’s numbers away from MacKinnon.

Not that it doesn’t matter, but they watch him every night, see all the things he can do and the chemistry those two have together. It’s something most teams don’t have and they have no plans of separating them anytime soon, so why is this a talking point? I guess it’s just the nature of ating to stay curious about things, especially when the results seem to go against what we perceive as common sense. All of us have watched Makar before and there’s no situation where any of us would say that he’s not at least a top three defenseman with his skillset and the counting stats he puts up. Points aren’t everything, but Makar’s shown the ability to score like most defenseman can’t & his skating opens up so much space for the Avs to run their offense in a way that most teams can’t.

This is where microstats get leaned on sometimes, especially with offensive defensemen with suspect on-ice impacts. Makar obviously has a lot of blue bars as an offense-first, puck-dominant player on a great team.

About what you’d expect. Elite offense and puck-moving stats across the board. This was his most recent season, but I wanted to look at his career at a larger scale because there’s some interesting trends.

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I wrote some spare thoughts on the Bowen Byram trade a couple months ago, but there is a lot more to say. It was the biggest trade of the off-season and there are some major league-wide implications depending on how he gels with Connor Bedard. My initial thoughts on the move was that it was a desperation move from Chicago and they gave up a top-five pick for a defenseman that, at this point in his career, nobody can agree on if he’s good or not. Objectively, he’s a good player but the Hawks bypassed all the warning signs and made him the highest paid defenseman in the league by cap hit, so there isn’t a lot of nuance to be had in this trade.

Admittedly I was a little cynical about this whole thing because it’s not my money and the league is becoming more of a “pay what you want for who you want” type of situation with the cap rising. There was a huge amount of sticker shock with the amount of money he got, though. It sort of reminds me of the Seth Jones trade, except Jones had the reputation and a few years in Columbus as their top-pair defenseman along with a few monstrous cardio performances in the playoffs. His contract was just unprecedented because Chicago made him the third-highest paid defenseman in the league despite him not posting the numbers that usually commands that kind of money. It was on the back of him being a number one defenseman in theory only. This Byram deal is of a similar ilk but he has even less to fall back on than Jones.

His counting stats are pretty good, not “highest paid defenseman in the league” good but the guy can put up points and he plays in that 21-22 minute range, compared to the 24-25 with tough matchups that Jones faced. He’s also played behind Rasmus Dahlin in his short career with Buffalo and Devon Toews/Cale Makar in Colorado, so there was never a path for him to be that undisputed top pair guy like he will be in Chicago. The question I keep asking myself with the whole premise of this deal is what the Hawks are hoping to unlock & how much of it relates to Connor Bedard.

The worst case scenario is Byram becomes productive defenseman on the top pair & the team is still lousy, because that’s basically what they had while Jones was there. The main difference is the supporting cast is a lot younger, whereas Jones walked into the tail end of the Kane/Toews/DeBrincat years with a core of prospects that were mostly role players. There’s reason to believe in the future here with so many players under 25 on the roster, but that’s just what it is. Belief, hope, potential. Sometimes that’s the worst thing because it kicks the can down the road, but Chicago has to be aggressive in their division. Colorado is a contender, so is Dallas depending on how this last season with Jason Robertson goes, Minnesota always finishes in the top three, Utah is on the rise and Winnipeg seems to alternate between good and bad seasons. These are teams at the phase of trying to figure out how to beat eachother in the playoffs while the Hawks are still figuring out how to get in.

The quickest way for Chicago to break into that class is for this Bedard/Byram combo to break into superstar mode while Nazar, Boisvert, Frontdell, Levshunov, Rinzel, Moore and Kantserov all hit their peaks around the same time. What I’m curious about is what their version of Byram looks like. He’s played some games in the 24-25 minute range, but he’s going to be more on an island now than he ever has before as the Hawks bedrock. Are they expecting a dominant two-way performance or do they see him a guy that will run their power play & put up crazy point totals? I wanted to do a deep dive into what this might look like & how he could mesh with Bedard.

The comparison I always had for Byram back in his Avalanche days was Shea Theodore & I saw a lot of this in their 2022 Cup run.

This is from awhile ago, but the 2022 Final is the best I’ve seen Byram play in the NHL & you can see how well he worked behind the skilled forwards on that Avs squad. I compare it to early career Shea Theodore because he was elite when the play was in front of him, especially from the red line in. Whether it was keeping pucks in on reloads, walking the line or quarterbacking the five-on-five offense from up top. This is what both Byram & Theodore excelled at early in their career when they were in the 3/4 spot in a role dedicated to creating offense. The training wheels have come off Theodore since then & he has blossomed into an undisputed top-pair guy in the absence of Alex Pietrangelo. The point totals might not show it, but Vegas leaned on him more than anyone in the playoffs. Will Byram follow that trajectory?

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If you followed my notes from tracking the playoffs, you might remember that there was a lot I wanted to say about that Oilers-Ducks series. It was so fascinating to watch in realtime and there were at least six more bullet points I could have rattled off. It was a perfect storm of a young Anaheim team on the upswing catching an Oilers team in a rough transition phase, making them look out of sorts on so many different levels.

The Oilers blew a lead on five different occassions this series while giving up an astonishing 98 scoring chances and 80 shots off the rush during five-on-five play alone, which averages out to 16 chances and 13 shots a game respectively. For context, the average rate of chances per game in the first round was 12.27 and the average shots off rush per game were 9.69, so the Ducks were well ahead of the pack here.

Fast forward two months later, Leo Carlsson is the highest paid player in the league via an offer sheet, the Oilers made yet another coaching change, chosing Mike Babcock as the guy to fix this and both teams now have a set contention window with their elite talents under contract. This is nothing new for the Oilers, as they always had a set timeline to win before Connor McDavid hits unrestricted free agency, but now there’s more of a concrete timeline with him under a two-year deal with a massive discount. They were also usually a sure bet to at least make the playoffs in a weak Pacific Division every year, but the landscape is beginning to change. The Ducks just escaped the pain years of their rebuild & are getting jumpstarted into win now mode with Carlsson’s new contract putting them on a clock before he hits free agency.

Assuming they get Cutter Gauthier signed, this is a manageable situation as far as next season is concerned. The nature of the offersheet make this a unique situation, but there will be more pressure on Carlsson to be That Dude. Every cold streak will be scrutinized and there will be endless comparisons throughout the season of his stats vs. elite players who make less money. Objectively, there’s never a situation where this contract looks good, as Carlsson’s never produced at a level where he should command $18 mil. but again, this is the point of an offersheet and speedrunning contract talks. It will be interesting to see if this has a domino effect in the coming years & teams banking on potential with elite talents.

The reason why I’m linking it to the Oilers series is because this was an occassion where Carlsson looked like a franchise player. He’s had games and moments where it was obvious that he was going to become the Ducks best player very shortly, but this series is where he looked like a real game-changer.

Let me put it this way, regardless of how the Oilers do it’s pretty common for McDavid and Draisaitl to runaway with the Microstat Game Score stat sheet. The reason why I bring this up is that it correlates well to individual contributions & small things that can swing the momentum in a seven-game series. The stats that give you the biggest boost are scoring chance contributions & controlled entries leading to scoring chances, stats typically dominated by the McDavids, MacKinnons and Kucherovs of the world. Here’s how Carlsson looked in that series compared to everyone else in the first round.

Right up there with them, Kucherov having a leg up from the extra game. One of the drivers of this that I mentioned was entries leading to scoring chances & this has been one of Carlsson’s strengths since his rookie year.

Small sample sizes make this look a little exaggerated, but the raw stats alone are pretty impressive too. In six games Carlsson had 28 controlled entries, 11 of them leading to scoring chances (the next closest player had 9), 17 5v5 scoring chances (next closest player had 13) and 25 overall chance contributions (next closest player had 19). He was the best player in the series, which is saying a lot considering who was on the other side (McDavid albeit playing on a bad ankle). While his production wasn’t earth-shattering (8 points in 6 games) and he tailed-off in the Vegas series, this was a glimpse of him becoming that elite, puck-dominant center. The point production doesn’t happen immediately for all players, but there are usually signs of them driving some part of the game at an elite level in their first two or three seasons. We saw that with MacKinnon, Hughes, Eichel and others who took some time before becoming elite point producers. Carlsson checks some of the boxes here, most notably with how he creates in transition.

Carlsson’s series against the Oilers followed this model, as he torched them in transition but where it deferwas how he created more on his own. He has been more of a pass-first type of player for most of his career, but against Edmonton he took more shots, played less from the perimeter and was more of an all-around threat. The speed & quick-strike ability that he brings is always dangerous, but it gets taken to another level when he isn’t defering to his linemates as much & creating on his own. This along with cleaning up his defensive zone play is what is going to make the version we saw of him in the first round more of a norm instead of an outlier.

This is why I want to do a deep dive into his performance in the Oilers series because right now Carlsson’s future is a little uncertain. How much of what we saw in that series was the Oilers and how much of that was him? He wasn’t the only Anaheim player to put up gaudy numbers, although he had the most impressive of the bunch and has the most potential with his draft pedigree and raw skill. What did that series look like compared to a typical Leo Carlsson game & what needs to happen for that to become the norm?

Let’s start with a couple clips from early in the series.

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What defines a superstar player now is more ambiguous than ever. Sometimes it’s obvious. You watch Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon or Macklin Celebrini & instantly know that guy is a superstar. Then you get into the next tier of great players and that’s where the debate starts. I talked about a few of them in my Microstat Player Compass post from a couple off-seasons ago where I looked at your Mat Barzals & Nik Ehlers of the league, excellent players who check most of the boxes & like to control the offense, but there was always something keeping them out of that elite/superstar tier. Whether that was lack of ice time, power play opportunity or just not having the point production (which is a product of the two).

With goal-scoring rates going up along with the salary cap, this class of the league is bigger than ever. There are always a couple names you wouldn’t expect hitting triple digit points and scoring in the upper 30’s/low 40’s every year and it’s made for an interesting off-season. It’s widely believed that the only way to get superstars is through the draft lottery or having one basically force a trade to you with the league becoming more of a have & have not enviornment. The Hurricanes showed that there is a path to a Cup without so-called superstars, but part of their team-building last year was acquiring players who might not be considered superstars but dominate heavy minutes at the top of the roster. K’Andre Miller being the best example of that.

Their road in the playoffs has also been pointed out ad nausem, but they were the strongest team left in the East because of how they built their roster with a high floor. It didn’t come without any risk, they gave up a lot for Miller last summer and moved Stankoven to a 2C role that he hadn’t played in years. Adding the aformentioned Ehlers was the game changer because he raises both the floor and the ceiling on the roster. As streaky as he can be, his strong play-driving means he doesn’t hurt the team when he’s going through a cold spell & then he raises the team’s when he starts to heat up. Add in the your Taylor Halls, Jackson Blakes in the middle of the roster and you have a strong group from top-to-bottom. They basically accumulated enough players who can take over a few games at a time rather than dominate every night. It’s the hand they’ve been dealt and everyone saw how it worked out for them in the playoffs.

A team in a similar position is the Washington Capitals, who have a very positive outlook despite missing the playoffs. They aren’t far removed from a great 2024-25 regular season and I always thought they were one of the best teams in the league at pro scouting & supplementing their aging corps with a wave of young talent to keep their floor petty high. Your Jakub Vranas and Andre Burakovskys of the world. I’ve been a regular on the Japers Rink podcast the past few seasons & this is a top we discuss frequently and the most important thing is that they always seem to know when a certain player or group has hit their proverbial ceiling or brought them as far as they could go.

I’ve been a fan of their off-season so far (outside of the Jenner signing) because their two big moves remind me a lot of what the Canes did last year with bringing in Ehlers. They’re a malleable, versatile team that can play both in the trenches & off the rush, but needed better players to be the ones leading the charge there. This is where Alex Tuch and Jordan Kyrou come in (and Connor McMichael leaves).

Here’s how the team looked last year in terms of how they created their offense.

I really like the McMichael/Kyrou swap because McMichael was the Caps speed guy, or at least the best that they had. He led the team in shots off the rush and controlled entries leading to scoring chances, “quick strike offense” as I call it. He’s objectively a good player & a great late-round pick, but it is fair to wonder if the 26 goals he scored a couple years ago was the best you’ll get out of him. He’s still finding his way as a player, yo-yoing between center and wing his first few seasons and the Caps have played him all over the lineup looking for a long-term fit. It’s not that the team didn’t like him because he played 16-17 minutes a night with duty on both special teams units, it’s just fair to wonder if the 26 goals was a lightning in a bottle situation & he’s just going to be a good-to-great middle of the roster player.

He reminds me a little of what the Blues got in Dylan Holloway a couple years ago, a jack-of-all-trades forward who is still finding what his niche is to get to that next level. His speed & breakaway potential are his calling card, but the inconsistent finishing has kept him in the middle of the roster. He was also moved to the wing full-time last year, so he created a lot of his counter-attack offense from high in the zone or relied on others to kickstart the offense for him. The Blues got a first-hand look at him in mid-March where he had an interesting statline with six controlled zone entries but only one shot contribution to show for it.

Clip-hunting is a time consuming process so I’m not going to have too much of it in this article with multiple players, but I did want to show some of McMichael’s tendencies. I talked about him early in the season as a winger/center hybrid & mentioned that McMichael tends to perform better when he plays center but the Caps benefit from him more on the wing because he can play a simpler game & open up more chances for his linemates. In this clip you get some of the good & bad of his play. When things are going north-south, there were few better players on the Caps, he ususally made the right play to get the team playing with some speed & be the catalyst for their transition game, hence why he was used on the PK.

Then things start to slow down and he become stationary. He’s not involved in the cycle as much as he could/should be and is defaulting to being a screen at the front of the net or chasing the play. The Caps love to have all five players involved in the cycle with one guy rotating out high & I was a little surprised how little McMichael was involved there. So he’s basically he’s a one-shot scorer and if he runs through a cold spell you don’t get a lot of production out of him. Although he’s still very good at helping shift the territorial game like he did in the second entry before making a line change.

He’s a good player and an interesting puzzle piece for the Blues, but something that caught my eye was how much of the Caps rush game went through him & some of their other mid-tier players.

This is the Capitals 5v5 rush offense by situation in the games I’ve tracked from last season. This team is by-commitee in nature, but it was definitely interesting to see how much Beauvillier and McMichael were the guys leading the charge when the pace of the game started to pick up. Ryan Leonard has high-end potential as well with how good he is on the counter-attack but you can also tell they needed more firepower. They have the system but not all the players yet.

Enter Jordan Kyrou and Alex Tuch.

I don’t love Tuch’s contract but in a vaccum these were the best moves of the off-season of adding two guys who can easily mesh into how your team likes to play while raising the ceiling. Washington’s been a successful by-committee team for a few years running now, not having the traditional “star” but having a few guys who fit into that echelon depending on who you ask. Tuch and Kyrou are two more they can add to that mix and they fill some holes on the roster to cover some of the things Ovechkin can’t do anymore & compliment the Protas’ and Wilsons of the roster who are more forecheck-driven.

Kyrou has been one of my favorite players to follow since he entered the league, I dubbed him Ehlers South after his first full year with the Blues because this was naturally gifted at being a one-man show off the rush. It’s something he’s been consistent with too.

Where Kyrou differs from Ehlers is he doesn’t have the same two-way reputation and that’s been an ongoing debate in my mentions whenever I post any of these charts on social media. Some Blues fans see him as a liability defensively while others that pay attention to stats like this & other models that paint him in a more positive light defensively. Basically showing that he’s not in the defensive zone much when he’s on the ice & generally making a positive impact.

His whole career with the Blues has also been pretty confusing because he’s objectively a dream of a second round pick who generally produces but I hear more negative talk about him & Robert Thomas. The Blues had just won the Cup & were going through a tough transitional period with Alex Pietrangelo leaving in free agency, Ryan O’Reilly getting traded & Craig Berube eventually losing his job. There was always more focus on what Kyrou & Thomas couldn’t do rather than what they were good at. Perhaps they weren’t ready to be leaders, which is fair but still, I feel like there has been a countdown to Kyrou’s eventual trade for years now.

You could say the writing was on the wall last season with his ice-time dropping almost two minutes a game and the Blues dropping him to the second power play unit. Not that Kyrou became redundant with Jimmy Snuggerud & Jake Neighbors in the fold but coaches will favor one guy over the other sometimes. Kyrou’s also been somewhat of a lightning rod in the Blues community, especially after Berube was fired so I wanted to dive into some of his higher rated games in A3Z from last year to take the good & the bad from it.

Kyrou has some of those Ehlers-y traits that I talked about last year, most notably with how he doesn’t give up when there’s a chance to make a play. He likes to reset and rerack in the neutral zone to get second & third chances at entries & he has a knack for getting the puck back immediately if a pass gets broken up. The dual-threat was also on display here becuase he loves to make that shot from the top of the faceoff circle if he has room (which is great or frustrating as hell depending on who you ask) and he’s very good at pulling up after gaining the line to let his linemates attack downhill. It’s similar to a lot of entries Dylan Strome likes to create, so I could see these two having some chemistry. He also doens’t need to be the guy gaining the line to be effective, so him & Strome or even Protas could mesh well there.

The negatives from the clips aside from a couple low percentage shots are the turnovers, which is something you have to live with when you have a guy that likes the puck on his stick. The hangup with Kyrou & fans has always been related to his defensive play, which is something I have a tough time evaluating because it’s a Rorschach Test but I did find a shift that shows some of his tendencies in all three zones.

Kyrou starts this by stretching the zone and taking one of his patented shots from the faceoff circle. It gets stopped and the rebound goes all the way out the neutral zone, the Blues break it up and Kyrou goes above the play again to drive the net on another entry. That gets broken up and he is the last guy back, surveying where he needs to go as the Blues are in pretty good shape heading into their own zone. He engages with Hinostroza but doesn’t win the puck and the Wild go low-to-high from there. From then he kind of plays the traditional winger defense, challenging the points, trying to disrupt things up high to get a breakaway the other way. He makes one breakup but there’s no counter-attack chance, so the Wild keep their cycle going, which ends up with the Blues getting their wires crossed and losing Trenin in front of the net. I’m not sure what that triangle of defenders between the faceoff circles were supposed to be doing here or if Faber activating crossed them up, but it was a potential mess.

This isn’t meant to highlight Kyrou’s defensive play or anything but more showing how he likes to play & the risk/reward element to his game. The shift started with a counter-attack look, which led to a reload opportunity with good backchecking from Kyrou and then ended with an extended shift in the defensive zone where Kyrou made an attempt for another counter-attack where nothing was there & he got stuck chasing the play. He didn’t play with a lot of intensity after losing the wall battle, but this was also a long shift for him. I guess the point of this exercise is to show why there’s a lot of varying opinions on Kyrou’s defensive play, but he still tries to play to his strengths, which is attacking the other way and trying to create quick-strike offense.

Then you have Alex Tuch, the more expensive and riskier part of this trade as a pending UFA. He has one of the more interesting A3Z profiles from the past season because he was one of the top creators of rush offense in the league despite not leading the charge much himself. You take the risks associated with that.

This is going to sound like an oxymoron but Tuch is a complementary piece disgused as a star and I mean that in a good way. He draws a lot of attention with his frame & powerful skating strides so he works better when he isn’t the one carrying the mail on every rush. Buffalo had one of the more underrated by-commitee forward corps in the league last year, as almost every player was around the league average or higher with controlled entries. (This isn’t even accounting for their defense corps because I don’t need to tell you how good Rasmus Dahlin is).

It’s interesting because Tuch is a shoot-first player still and you’d think someone like that and with his frame would excel as the hulking power forward down the wing, but he did more of his damage off the puck last year and it unlocked one of his best seasons off the rush in a long time. This was with somewhat of a revolving door of linemates too, although Buffalo did reunite him with Tage in the second half.

It gives Washington some options on how they want to use him. He can be the guy that leads the charge for your offense & carries the mail, but the Sabres went a different route and he still produced. Washington could look at this and pair him with a carry-heavy player like Pierre-luc Dubois or make him Strome’s running mate & see what happens when he gets a more puck-dominant role. There’s also a lot of right-wingers in the mix now so I’m expecting some trial and error from the Caps in the early parts before they settle on something.

Here’s a goal from last year with Peyton Krebs on the entry and Owen Power getting the setup.

This is off a slower, regrouping play that Washington does frequently & it’s a more free-flowing play with the defenseman jumping in all the way below the goal line & Tuch’s able to creep in unmarked with all the attention going to power. He should be a great fit for the Caps playing style & Tuch’s only blemish is that rough Montreal series where he was held point-less in all seven games (while averaging something like 3-4 shots a night). That’s a topic for the upcoming weeks when I do my full playoff statcaps.

It’s the summer of star hunting and I think Washington did a better job of raising their team’s ceiling than anyone else. It’s not the same level of splash as making a move for a Dylan Larkin or Jason Robertson, but you get two players who fit your system, execute at a higher level and bring some versatility to the top of your lineup. It’s a little crowded on the right wing now, but the Caps aren’t as rigid with forward positions so I don’t think it will be a huge deal.

In the coming weeks we’re going to talk about some of the other bigger moves & the impact they’ll have around the league, but I wanted to give the Caps some love for the their strong off-season so far.

What defines a superstar player now is more ambiguous than ever. Sometimes it’s obvious. You watch Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon or Macklin Celebrini & instantly know that guy is a superstar. Then you get into the next tier of great players and that’s where the debate starts. I talked about a few of them in my Microstat Player Compass post from a couple off-seasons ago where I looked at your Mat Barzals & Nik Ehlers of the league, excellent players who check most of the boxes & like to control the offense, but there was always something keeping them out of that elite/superstar tier. Whether that was lack of ice time, power play opportunity or just not having the point production (which is a product of the two).

With goal-scoring rates going up along with the salary cap, this class of the league is bigger than ever. There are always a couple names you wouldn’t expect hitting triple digit points and scoring in the upper 30’s/low 40’s every year and it’s made for an interesting off-season. It’s widely believed that the only way to get superstars is through the draft lottery or having one basically force a trade to you with the league becoming more of a have & have not enviornment. The Hurricanes showed that there is a path to a Cup without so-called superstars, but part of their team-building last year was acquiring players who might not be considered superstars but dominate heavy minutes at the top of the roster. K’Andre Miller being the best example of that.

Their road in the playoffs has also been pointed out ad nausem, but they were the strongest team left in the East because of how they built their roster with a high floor. It didn’t come without any risk, they gave up a lot for Miller last summer and moved Stankoven to a 2C role that he hadn’t played in years. Adding the aformentioned Ehlers was the game changer because he raises both the floor and the ceiling on the roster. As streaky as he can be, his strong play-driving means he doesn’t hurt the team when he’s going through a cold spell & then he raises the team’s when he starts to heat up. Add in the your Taylor Halls, Jackson Blakes in the middle of the roster and you have a strong group from top-to-bottom. They basically accumulated enough players who can take over a few games at a time rather than dominate every night. It’s the hand they’ve been dealt and everyone saw how it worked out for them in the playoffs.

A team in a similar position is the Washington Capitals, who have a very positive outlook despite missing the playoffs. They aren’t far removed from a great 2024-25 regular season and I always thought they were one of the best teams in the league at pro scouting & supplementing their aging corps with a wave of young talent to keep their floor petty high. Your Jakub Vranas and Andre Burakovskys of the world. I’ve been a regular on the Japers Rink podcast the past few seasons & this is a top we discuss frequently and the most important thing is that they always seem to know when a certain player or group has hit their proverbial ceiling or brought them as far as they could go.

I’ve been a fan of their off-season so far (outside of the Jenner signing) because their two big moves remind me a lot of what the Canes did last year with bringing in Ehlers. They’re a malleable, versatile team that can play both in the trenches & off the rush, but needed better players to be the ones leading the charge there. This is where Alex Tuch and Jordan Kyrou come in (and Connor McMichael leaves).

Here’s how the team looked last year in terms of how they created their offense.

I really like the McMichael/Kyrou swap because McMichael was the Caps speed guy, or at least the best that they had. He led the team in shots off the rush and controlled entries leading to scoring chances, “quick strike offense” as I call it. He’s objectively a good player & a great late-round pick, but it is fair to wonder if the 26 goals he scored a couple years ago was the best you’ll get out of him. He’s still finding his way as a player, yo-yoing between center and wing his first few seasons and the Caps have played him all over the lineup looking for a long-term fit. It’s not that the team didn’t like him because he played 16-17 minutes a night with duty on both special teams units, it’s just fair to wonder if the 26 goals was a lightning in a bottle situation & he’s just going to be a good-to-great middle of the roster player.

He reminds me a little of what the Blues got in Dylan Holloway a couple years ago, a jack-of-all-trades forward who is still finding what his niche is to get to that next level. His speed & breakaway potential are his calling card, but the inconsistent finishing has kept him in the middle of the roster. He was also moved to the wing full-time last year, so he created a lot of his counter-attack offense from high in the zone or relied on others to kickstart the offense for him. The Blues got a first-hand look at him in mid-March where he had an interesting statline with six controlled zone entries but only one shot contribution to show for it.

Clip-hunting is a time consuming process so I’m not going to have too much of it in this article with multiple players, but I did want to show some of McMichael’s tendencies. I talked about him early in the season as a winger/center hybrid & mentioned that McMichael tends to perform better when he plays center but the Caps benefit from him more on the wing because he can play a simpler game & open up more chances for his linemates. In this clip you get some of the good & bad of his play. When things are going north-south, there were few better players on the Caps, he ususally made the right play to get the team playing with some speed & be the catalyst for their transition game, hence why he was used on the PK.

Then things start to slow down and he become stationary. He’s not involved in the cycle as much as he could/should be and is defaulting to being a screen at the front of the net or chasing the play. The Caps love to have all five players involved in the cycle with one guy rotating out high & I was a little surprised how little McMichael was involved there. So he’s basically he’s a one-shot scorer and if he runs through a cold spell you don’t get a lot of production out of him. Although he’s still very good at helping shift the territorial game like he did in the second entry before making a line change.

He’s a good player and an interesting puzzle piece for the Blues, but something that caught my eye was how much of the Caps rush game went through him & some of their other mid-tier players.

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This was originally going to be a post on the Darren Raddysh trade & his new eight-year contract with the Leafs. Researching for that article had me thinking of some broader, league-wide topics. Then the Bowen Byram trade happened & I decided to change the direction entirely. Mostly because I think the overall point with Raddysh is pretty cut-and-dry. You have a defenseman who was pretty late to the game, making his NHL debut in his mid-20’s, who ascended to the top-pair on one of the league’s best teams after only three seasons and had a career year scoring 22 goals & 70 points.

The backhalf of that deal is going to hurt but the hope is that Raddysh will give them a few years of stability along with a few goals that will break some NHL EDGE records. Diving into his career was interesting because he didn’t take a traditional route to the free agency payday. He wasn’t drafted and ended up in Tampa’s farm system after a couple of years in Rockford & Hartford before the Lightning gave him a chance. His ice time jumped top 23-24 minutes a game after hovering around 17-19 minutes a night for most of his career and he crushed it in that role.

An injury to Victor Hedman and declining play from mainstays like Erik Cernak forced Raddysh to carry more of the load and it’s hard to ask for a better contract year than this. The sheltered defenseman taking the leap to a bigger role is a long-debated topic in hockey circles and there’s no real magic pill to determine if a player will succeed or not. It’s fitting that Tyler Dellow works in the Canes front office now because he was usually the first person to tell everyone to pump the breaks on sheltered defensemen who put up gaudy numbers in sheltered roles. Carolina’s had a great recent track record here with Sean Walker & Jalen Chatfield, but the Lightning are also up there with plugging any defensemen from their system into their lineup & not seeing a dropoff. If I’m planning on signing any D from Tampa, I’m looking at how Charle-Edouard D’Astous waltzed into their lineup and looked like he belonged after signing with the team as a 27-year old with more games played in the ECHL than the AHL.

Tampa has a defenseman factory going right now and that would be the only qualm I have with acquiring Raddysh. Not that he can’t succeed outside of their insulation, but it gave me a lot to think about with how they’ve been churning out these players from out of nowhere the past couple of years. Nick Perbix was the most recent example of this, signing in Nashville after crushing a third-pair role in Tampa for three years. He had an okay season with the Preds, blending in with that spilled box of cereal of a defense corps rather than providing any stability.

This is where diving into Raddysh’s stats & trajectory got interesting, if only because he played better when he got more minutes & responsibility.

Some of this isn’t too surprising, as you get more minutes with Nikita Kucherov when you’re higher in the lineup, which means more connected plays out of the zone. The workload with retrievals is what really took a leap last year and that’s something the Leafs should feel confident about when it comes to integrating Raddysh into their lineup. He might not get the same offensive opportunities, but at worst you have a malleable player who seems coachable. Where it gets even more interesting is looking at the stats of his partner, JJ Moser.

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It took me forever to get to this recap and even longer to even start tracking the game in my usual All Three Zones format. I don’t really have a good reason for it except I was just savoring the whole moment. You never know when your favorite team will even make it back to the dance, so you just soak in the good vibes of watching your team go on the celebration circuit. Drifting between fan and analyst was a fun experience for me. Tracking Game 6 was my first time really “watching” it because I went for a walk at the wetland preserve to just zen out after the longest 40-something hours of my life leading to puck drop. I had a good feeling the Hurricanes wer egoing to get the job done but every fan has a sense of dread in them, so I wanted to follow the game somewhere that wasn’t my house just in case things went sideways. I’m less likely to have a meltdown over something I can’t control if I’m in a public space at least.

The house was fun during these past couple of months. I have no idea if my two-year old daughter will remember all the random goal hugs or dad being fixated to his phone for a few minutes during an intense penalty kill or overtime games, but I’ll always have the matching jersey pictures as keepsakes. My mom is a diehard Washington Redskins/Commanders fan & has simlar stories about me during their Super Bowl run in 1991. I have no recollection of any of it, but there are plenty of home movies and pictures that embarrassed me to the point where I rooted against Washington for a long time. If my daughter is anything like me, this is probably a look into my future as a parent. Experiencing this whole run as a parent was special, though. I visited my parents house in Maryland over Christmas and there was a lot of old toddler-sized Washington merchandise and pictures of me in the burgundy and gold. She told me that I would yell “touchdown” whenever they scored and I couldn’t help but think about that whenever the Canes scored. I have a pretty small family & we don’t have a lot of traditions, but sports was something that always brought us together, even though I’m the only hockey fan in the group (somehow Ovi’s Capitals didn’t hook them but the Nats World Series run converted them to baseball fans).

The Hurricanes have always been a big part of my life, though. Whether it was covering the games & tracking them for Shutdownline (A Bloguin exclusive) or making sure I was home at 6 every night to catch puck drop, it was rare for me to miss a game. Oddly enough, this was the least invested I was in the regular season just because life got flipped upside down and the Canes are at the point where the regular season is a formality.

It’s not like there weren’t things to be excited about, though. Nikolaj Ehlers has been one of my favorite players to watch for years, and now he’s on my favorite team. The K’Andre Miller trade was a bold move of taking a high-ceiling player who hit a wall with one team & trusting him to carry your defense to a new level, Logan Stankoven showed enough in the playoffs to keep people invested & the 82-game slate generally has no shortage of fun, crazy games that you always remember regardless of how the year ends. This year certainly delivered on that front.

Leads were surrendered, comebacks were made, a record-setting number of defensemen were used as fans got to see mid/late round picks like Joel Nystrom and Charles-Alexis Legeault play their first NHL games. The process looked different, but it was business as usual for the Hurricanes. Even with a few slip-ups, they were never in danger of missing the playoffs and the season seemed to be more about hitting milestones. We saw six different players score 20 goals and Brandon Bussi break some of Cam Ward’s old records in half the games. It was the most casual I’ve watched the Hurricanes but also the most fun I had following them because there was something new every night.

The first two rounds felt like business as usual with the proving grounds coming in the Conference Final & Stanley Cup Final. Can they come from behind to win a few more games? Can they win a game where the only 7-11 shots they give up are Grade A chances? Is Freddie Andersen going to hold up for an entire playoff run? I mentioned in my K’Andre Miller trade recap that it’s hard to get upset at his front office because I can usually see the rationale with what they’re doing even if I don’t agree with it. They’ve constructed the roster to where they don’t have to go “all in” at a deadline & keep the contending window open for a long time. This season felt like their best shot for the Aho/Slavin/Staal chapter because they’re not getting any younger and the Eastern Conference was open for the taking. Florida’s injured, Buffalo is still new to this, Montreal is still building and the rest of the Metro Division is a permanent state of “figuring their shit out.”

Even if Vegas had more star power, this was the Hurricanes best shot to break the wall down & put to rest some of their old playoff narrative. Jordan Staal certainly played this series like it was his last shot, even though Brind’Amour will probably convince him to keep coming back until he’s in his mid-40’s. Slavin had some rough moments early and played the two best games of his hockey career to close the door. Not that the Vegas players weren’t dialed-in, but it’s human nature to take things to the next level when the finish line is in sight. To me, that's what Game 6 looked like as Carolina closed out the series in the most fitting way to get Brind’Amour his first Cup win as a head coach.

Game 6 Statcap

Here are a few side notes about the five Vegas scoring chances in this game:

• Five of them were from Pavel Dorofyev (four out of their 5v5 chances were from him)

• Three of their chances came on the same shift with a little under 11 minutes left in the first period.

• They went from 15:48 in the second period to 3:14 left in the third without registering a scoring chance, the Hurricanes had increased their lead to 2-0 at that point & outchanced Vegas 6-1 during that stretch.

Sometimes sequencing is important & Vegas had a chance to flip the game early after Taylor Hall’s goal, but this is why the Canes started Bussi. He handled a flurry of Vegas chances both in the middle of the first & on the late Vegas power play and once he shut the door, the rest of the team took over. I don’t want to say it was a perfect game by Carolina, if only because I remember tracking COL/TB where the Avs literally shutout the Lightning on the scoring chance out 13-0, but for a closeout game it’s hard to ask for much better. This was also the closest thing we’ve seen to a vintage Canes performance this series.

The majority of this game was played on the forecheck & that critical Jackson Blake goal was scored off a dogged effort by the Canes young forwards where they stripped Hanifin of the puck three times. Then you have the Taylor Hall goal, which was off a neutral zone turnover & a frozen rope of a pass from Jaccob Slavin. That was typical of Hurricanes Hockey from 2021-23, but you saw some of their growth in the rest of this series and playoff run. That said, Game 6 was all about protecting, preventing and limiting mistakes, so you saw more flips out of the zone and quicker zone exits. They didn’t need to do much else except be careful in the offensive zone because VGK was quick on the counter-attack. The team was dialed-in for this one, though.

This was the last sign of life Vegas had in the game. They get a counter-attack chance going with Tomas Hertl breaking up Jackson Blake’s shot. It becomes a two-on-one after Nikishin tries to eliminate Colton Sissons but the pass gets through him. Gostisbehere goes into snow angel mode to force Hertl’s hand but the veteran forward waits him out & gets around him. Who is right there on the back-check? Jackson Blake. He doesn’t negate the shot, but any potential for a backdoor play is gone & there’s another layer of disruption for Hertl to worry about. He gets a pretty good chance that Bussi makes the save on & Logan Stankoven is there to get the rebound to end the whole sequence.

Just one example of how I thought everyone on the Hurricanes looked locked in and ready to end the series. Perhaps nobody moreso than Jaccob Slavin, who had the best game of his career.

I was critical of Slavin early in this series, mainly questioning his health after an injury-plagued season. I still don’t know if he was even close to 100% for this game but I will give him credit for raising his game when the team needed it. He had a rock solid Game 5 & was arguably the best player on the ice in Game 6. Vegas entered the zone against him 13 times and he allowed only three controlled zone entries, denied 4 of them and blanked the Knights on scoring chances when they attacked his side of the ice. His most common opponent on zone entries? Jack Eichel, who had only one controlled entry on five tries against Slavin. It was a vintage performance for the Carolina blue liner and it felt appropriate that he played a critical role in their opening goal. Everyone was waiting for one of the Hurricanes stars to have that explosive game like Marner did early in the series. It turns out one of them did, but in a different way than most were expecting. Look at where the Vegas top guys are on the chart & where Slavin is. This should tell you everything you need to know.

I also want to give Jalen Chatfield some love for how he defended in the final two minutes and to just throw some praise his way in general.

They signed him to a two-way deal in 2021, mostly to fill out depth and give the Chicago Wolves an experienced veteran. COVID-related absences led to him getting some NHL games with the Hurricanes and he looked like he belonged in those stints. The next year he became too good to bench and he crushed a third pair role. They re-signed him for three years expecting him to take the leap from a third-pair guy to top-four, graudating all the way to Slavin’s defense partner with heavy penalty kill duty. He’s a physical, jack-of-all-trades defenseman you can plug into whatever role you need & it’s rare you’ll be disappointed with his effort. I’m happy for all the guys on the team, but the Chatfields, Robinsons, Bussis & Walkers on the team are the ones I’m thrilled for. Guys who either played in the AHL for awhile or had to step into a bigger role out of neccessity and crushed it. You can even apply this to Logan Stankoven stepping into the second-line center role at the start of the year & the team sticking with him in that spot even when he wasn’t tearing up the scoresheet.

Then you have the guys who came here looking for a bigger role. It was the crux of the Jordan Staal trade over a decade ago. Getting to be teammates with his brother was part of it, but most of the hockey world saw Jordan as a guy that could flourish in a top spot on a team that didn’t have Pittsburgh’s center depth. The offense never came in Carolina, until this series. Not that Staal has ever been bad in Carolina, he just found his home in a shutdown role and it seemed set in stone that the offensive breakout was never going to happen. Enter Nikolaj Ehlers, another guy looking to play a bigger role on a new team and while he didn’t get the top line slot or superstar ice time, he got the matchup role alongside Staal. The result was Staal having only his second 20-goal season in 13 years with the Hurricanes and a Stanley Cup run where the captain scored eight goals en route to a Conn Smythe.

Finding undervalued players is what the Hurricanes are all about and what you saw in this run was the result of all of that falling into place. Sean Walker is probably a $6 mil. defenseman if he was a couple inches taller, Jackson Blake definitely doesn’t get drafted in the 5th round, Logan Stankoven probably doesn’t get a prlonged 2C shot, etc.

The Series

The overall stats are similar to the Avs-Vegas series in some ways with the Canes having the edge in shots while Vegas did what they could to keep the gap close in scoring chances. Doing so through manufacturing higher percentage plays on offense, whether that was through the counter-attack, playing behind the goal line, waiting to shoot from the point so traffic can develop or catching Carolina on bad line changes (which seemed to happen every game). They had a lot of success playing off the forecheck early in the series, burning Carolina on the low-cycle but once the Hurricanes cleaned that up, they started getting more going off the rush turning every Carolina misplay in the offensive zone or slow line change into a breakaway chance.

Vegas was the most chameleon-like opponent they were going to see in this run, but the series started to tilt in Carolina’s favor when the Knights could just bank on mistakes to get easy offense. The rush offense categories where they led Carolina were regroups & controlled breakouts, slower developing plays where they tried to catch the Hurricanes making a line change or break through their structure. They have the talent to do this, but it becomes more difficult when you’re playing from behind and poaching neutral zone turnovers is part of Carolina’s DNA since 2019. Game 6 was culmination of that.

Game-by-Game

Playoff series are best viewed as a timeline, especially this one becasue every game was so different from the last one. Even Game 5 & 6 were drastically different because Vegas’ wave of offense in the first period ended up going down the drain thanks to Brandon Bussi and the Canes striking three times in the second. Game 6 is when they were in their true shutdown mode, not giving the Knights anything for a long duration of the game. This also shows how adapatable this team is now compared to where they were a few years ago.

The forecheck & the half-rink game is where they were always the most comfortable and they would always struggle if a team tried to turn a series into a track meet. They didn’t have the horses to generate the quick-strike offense they needed to when things started to open up and the roster has come a long way since. I do find it interesting that the team seemed to go back to their roots the further the series dragged on, but it speaks well to how malleable this roster is now. It also makes me hope the narrative of how “they always play the same way” gets put to rest now because I saw a lot of people say this before the series & I’m not sure how many have actually been paying attention since 2023.

Individual Stats

This will be a quick rundown of the individual stats for both teams.

Shots

Carolina

Staal & Ehlers were the team’s engine this series. The chances weren’t always there every game in volume like they were for the Stankoven line, but they drove territorial play better than anyone. Staal has the best chance to shot ratio on the team thanks to Ehlers playmaking & his condor wingspan being able to get a stick on every pass thrown his way or errant clears by the Knights. The Conn Smythe could have easily gone to Taylor Hall for his overall performance & a terrific Game 6, but I have no problem giving it to the guy that scored eight goals & led the team in chance production.

Hall also had the most extreme hot/cold series out of anyone on the team, struggling in the first two games and becoming a force the rest of the series. I also want to give Aho some credit. He didn’t have the playoff breakout like we were hoping, but he did his job to set the table for Stankoven’s line to dominate. It’s one thing to not score, but good things happen for the rest of the lineup when you’re at least generating shots & not and not fighting upstream the entire game.

Nobody on the defense really jumped out offensively, but they’ll get their flowers in a second. Gostisbehere deserves plenty of praise for his power play work, though.

Vegas

Without drifting too far into Mitch Marner derangement, he & Brett Howden combined for 18 5v5 scoring chances in the first three games of the series. In the final three games they had only six, five of them coming from Howden. Dorofyev also had 8 out of their 21 5v5 chances in the final three games. I’m not sure if there was a “don’t let this guy beat us” factor going on with Carolina after Game 3, but it was interesting to see how much of VGK’s offense shifted to Dorofyev after the Marner hat trick. I mentioned my qualms with moving Marner to the top line with Eichel & how I felt that it made him less of a factor, but that wasn’t a permanent line from Torts.

Carolina neutralized Marner when the series came down to crunch time & Eichel could not pick up the slack. There was some bad luck on the power play & with the empty net, but he couldn’t generate any chances at even strength, recording only two all series with only three chance setups. The Hurricanes know how to defend him & how he likes to defer to his linemates, using his strong puck control skills to wait things out and let guys get lost in coverage, but the plays just weren’t developing after Game 1. He managed to get himself open a few times but couldn’t find the back of the net. I’m never that hard on players for missing chances because this stuff happens in the blink of an eye & there’s lots of external factors, but when you only have two 5v5 scoring chances all series, the ones you miss are going to be magnified.

Zone Entries/Exits

Carolina

This is Ehlers’ money zone, even if the 42% Carry-in rate is shockingly low for him. he was only behind Taylor Hall in generating chances off zone entries and his work on exits was irreplaceable. This is why that Staal line had such a different look to it than years past, even when Seth Jarvis was on it. Ehlers’ ability to flip territorial play is unmatched even when he isn’t scoring and made his line such a dual-threat.

What’s interesting is the top controlled entry guys were the two stars & Svechnikov had a better series than he is probably getting credit for with how many chances the Canes were getting off his entries. His work on the forecheck here is also noted, as he was just as tenacious as Stankoven when it came to pestering defensemen.

Exits are where Nikishin will finally get some credit. He was a zero for most of this playoff run & was out there mostly to just not get destroyed on the third pair, but he did make Gostisbehere’s job easier with breaking the puck out. Having the big guy absorb the hits on the forecheck is an underappreciated task for defensemen & this was the one area Nikishin did well in.

Vegas

If you go back to my series preview, I mentioned Andersson & Hanifin were going to be the x-factors this series. They were in their own zone a ton against Colorao and were pretty lucky to escape that series without being on the ice for at least four goals against. They aren’t the smoothest puck movers out of their end & rely on breaking up plays at the last second so they can regroup or counter. They had similar troubles moving the puck this series, Carolina causing a combined 16.2 botched retrievals per 60 from that pair alone & they were lit up for six goals against. You can also see how much the William Karlsson injury burned them. Easily their most reliable puck mover & an integral part of that line with Marner & Howden.

What’s Next?

I have some off-season content in store. I’m adding some more games to the All Three Zones data & working on some new ways to present the data as well as some more detailed stats. If you enjoyed my overview of the playoffs last year, I’ll have a version of that for this year too once I get some of the holes in the second round tracked. Plus I’m sure the off-season will give us a few things to discuss as we get closer to July 1st.

Don’t forget the playoff workbook is here if you haven’t checked it out yet. If people find this easier/better to use than the current format, I’ll work on migrating everything from 2016 over to Google sheets instead.

Enjoy the off-season!

It took me forever to get to this recap and even longer to even start tracking the game in my usual All Three Zones format. I don’t really have a good reason for it except I was just savoring the whole moment. You never know when your favorite team will even make it back to the dance, so you just soak in the good vibes of watching your team go on the celebration circuit. Drifting between fan and analyst was a fun experience for me. Tracking Game 6 was my first time really “watching” it because I went for a walk at the wetland preserve to just zen out after the longest 40-something hours of my life leading to puck drop. I had a good feeling the Hurricanes wer egoing to get the job done but every fan has a sense of dread in them, so I wanted to follow the game somewhere that wasn’t my house just in case things went sideways. I’m less likely to have a meltdown over something I can’t control if I’m in a public space at least.

The house was fun during these past couple of months. I have no idea if my two-year old daughter will remember all the random goal hugs or dad being fixated to his phone for a few minutes during an intense penalty kill or overtime games, but I’ll always have the matching jersey pictures as keepsakes. My mom is a diehard Washington Redskins/Commanders fan & has simlar stories about me during their Super Bowl run in 1991. I have no recollection of any of it, but there are plenty of home movies and pictures that embarrassed me to the point where I rooted against Washington for a long time. If my daughter is anything like me, this is probably a look into my future as a parent. Experiencing this whole run as a parent was special, though. I visited my parents house in Maryland over Christmas and there was a lot of old toddler-sized Washington merchandise and pictures of me in the burgundy and gold. She told me that I would yell “touchdown” whenever they scored and I couldn’t help but think about that whenever the Canes scored. I have a pretty small family & we don’t have a lot of traditions, but sports was something that always brought us together, even though I’m the only hockey fan in the group (somehow Ovi’s Capitals didn’t hook them but the Nats World Series run converted them to baseball fans).

The Hurricanes have always been a big part of my life, though. Whether it was covering the games & tracking them for Shutdownline (A Bloguin exclusive) or making sure I was home at 6 every night to catch puck drop, it was rare for me to miss a game. Oddly enough, this was the least invested I was in the regular season just because life got flipped upside down and the Canes are at the point where the regular season is a formality.

It’s not like there weren’t things to be excited about, though. Nikolaj Ehlers has been one of my favorite players to watch for years, and now he’s on my favorite team. The K’Andre Miller trade was a bold move of taking a high-ceiling player who hit a wall with one team & trusting him to carry your defense to a new level, Logan Stankoven showed enough in the playoffs to keep people invested & the 82-game slate generally has no shortage of fun, crazy games that you always remember regardless of how the year ends. This year certainly delivered on that front.

Leads were surrendered, comebacks were made, a record-setting number of defensemen were used as fans got to see mid/late round picks like Joel Nystrom and Charles-Alexis Legeault play their first NHL games. The process looked different, but it was business as usual for the Hurricanes. Even with a few slip-ups, they were never in danger of missing the playoffs and the season seemed to be more about hitting milestones. We saw six different players score 20 goals and Brandon Bussi break some of Cam Ward’s old records in half the games. It was the most casual I’ve watched the Hurricanes but also the most fun I had following them because there was something new every night.

The first two rounds felt like business as usual with the proving grounds coming in the Conference Final & Stanley Cup Final. Can they come from behind to win a few more games? Can they win a game where the only 7-11 shots they give up are Grade A chances? Is Freddie Andersen going to hold up for an entire playoff run? I mentioned in my K’Andre Miller trade recap that it’s hard to get upset at his front office because I can usually see the rationale with what they’re doing even if I don’t agree with it. They’ve constructed the roster to where they don’t have to go “all in” at a deadline & keep the contending window open for a long time. This season felt like their best shot for the Aho/Slavin/Staal chapter because they’re not getting any younger and the Eastern Conference was open for the taking. Florida’s injured, Buffalo is still new to this, Montreal is still building and the rest of the Metro Division is a permanent state of “figuring their shit out.”

Even if Vegas had more star power, this was the Hurricanes best shot to break the wall down & put to rest some of their old playoff narrative. Jordan Staal certainly played this series like it was his last shot, even though Brind’Amour will probably convince him to keep coming back until he’s in his mid-40’s. Slavin had some rough moments early and played the two best games of his hockey career to close the door. Not that the Vegas players weren’t dialed-in, but it’s human nature to take things to the next level when the finish line is in sight. To me, that's what Game 6 looked like as Carolina closed out the series in the most fitting way to get Brind’Amour his first Cup win as a head coach.

Game 6 Statcap

Here are a few side notes about the five Vegas scoring chances in this game:

• Five of them were from Pavel Dorofyev (four out of their 5v5 chances were from him)

• Three of their chances came on the same shift with a little under 11 minutes left in the first period.

• They went from 15:48 in the second period to 3:14 left in the third without registering a scoring chance, the Hurricanes had increased their lead to 2-0 at that point & outchanced Vegas 6-1 during that stretch.

Read more

The Hurricanes have been all about debunking narratives, the biggest one is that they have this rigid system and don’t make adjustments. I’m not sure if they’re still in this series if that’s the case, they certainly don’t win Game 5. I mentioned it in my post-game note, but that was was the most anti-Canes win you can think of. They were outchanced 15-5, got massively outplayed on home ice in the first 10-12 minutes and had to find pockets of the game to take advantage of. The typical Hurricanes team doesn’t do well when they can’t control play & things go off-script. They’ve lacked the game-breakers that can flip the things upside down when they need to.

Enter Nikolaj Ehlers. A failed clear by Vegas turns into a Jordan Staal goal because of a brilliant pass by Ehlers that the Hurricans captain deflected by Carter Hart & the game has a different look from then on. Things start to settle down and they turn the second period into a bit of a slogfest where they created only one scoring chance at 5v5 while allowing three to Vegas. This is the type of game other teams do to them in the playoffs. There’s an initial surge and after that, it becomes more of a grind both ways. Sure, the Hurricanes will lead in scoring chances (or trail in this instance), but they’re either spaced apart or off deflections where it’s rare for the shooter to have a clean one-on-one look at the goalie.

I think back to that nightmare of a Florida series from 2023 and Carolina’s game on Thursday reminded me a lot of what the Panthers did to them. It’s not something I want them to repeat because I’m not sure if they win that game if you replay it 20 times, but we are at the point where things just need to break their way once. Can they do it? Let’s talk about what got us to this point.

Series Stats

An ongoing theme in this seires is the Hurricanes trying a lot of east-west passing, especially off the rush. It’s not the same shot volume-type of approach we’re using to seeing from them as they’re really dialed-in on getting Carter Hart to move laterally. It’s worked to a degree. Ferraro was a little critical of them early in Game 5 on the ESPN broadcast because of how often they were passing up shots & I get it. When you’re getting outplayed early in the game, sometimes a shot on goal gets the fans into it and creates the idea that you’ve got some momentum going. It’s like when you’re doing gig work or writing, sometimes knocking out a couple of easy, low-dollar orders or writing a couple of quick news pieces early in the morning helps set the tone for the rest of the way even if it’s not what you’re trying to accomplish. Momentum is the biggest concept in sports that nobody can really prove but everyone acknowledges its existence. I made the case for it in Game 2 with Ehlers & Miller generating some medium-danger shots that helped Carolina re-establish a territorial advantage in their comeback win, but a lot of other things had to go right in that game after that as well.

Either way, Carolina isn’t just throwing pucks at the net anymore and if there’s a chance for a backdoor play of some sort, they’re taking it. That’s why the Aho line has had such an underwhelming series from a production standpoint & why their chance count is so low. It’s a risky game, especially for a team that isn’t exactly known for it’s finishing power but this is something that has worked for them in this playoff run.

Another reason for that is Carter Hart has been rotten. This hasn’t exactly been a goalie-friendly series with the low shot totals, but his .856 save percentage is actually inflated from how many shots from the neutral zone are being counted. Among shots where the Hurricanes are trying to score, Hart has stopped only 82.5% of those, 5 of them coming off Carolina’s 12 cross-slot passes. Andersen isn’t much better at 86.5% & Bussi is currently sitting at 88.3%. Still, it’s almost an automatic goal for Carolina if they can get Hart moving laterally (almost 50% of their shots) and it’s the reason this series could end tonight with the margins being so slim.

Tortorella is sticking with Hart for this game and another coaching move I’ll be interested to see is if he keeps the super line of Stone, Eichel and Marner together. Marner dominated the first four games on a different line with Brett Howden as his center & Torts brought out the nuclear option late in Game 4 when the Knights were pressing. Dimitri and I had differing thoughts on this on the PDOCast the other day. This is why I like doing the podcast with him because it gets me out of my own bubble sometimes, as I was fixated on the missed opportunities this line had while he pointed out some of the early chances they generated, a couple of them they were pretty unlucky to not score on. I didn’t like moving Marner away from a line that the Canes didn’t really have an answer for & it made it easier for them to match Staal against them & not worry about the rest of the lineup. This might be hindsight analysis on my part because it’s easier to say Vegas’ plan here is wrong when they lose, but there were a few moments where things could have gone sideways for Carolina.

Let’s look at a couple shifts.

One of the things I didn’t like about this line is that it was too “Eichel driven” and it’s easy for me to say that now that he’s in a cold spell. Torts is doing whatever he can to get his star center going & Carolina’s done a pretty good job of containing him because the way he likes to play offense fits the way Carolina likes to defend. The puck is on his stick for a long time & all the defender has to do is not lose his check. Adding Marner gives the Canes something else to worry about because he is never stationary in the offensive zone and Stone is a master at finding soft spots in the defense. Still, Carolina wants Eichel on the outside and they’re banking on him throwing pucks away out of frustration if their coverage holds tight.

Here, he gets the puck to the net with Stone camped out in front & Marner cutting there as well. It’s not a clean pass, but it’s a shot opportunity for Stone with some obstruction from Walker. They don’t get a great chance, but this is how they can create offense out of nothing. I mentioned that Marner is the more dangerous one to cover on the cycle becuase the puck is off his stick in a millisecond, but Eichel can make plays through traffic too even if it takes longer.

Sometimes you get lucky. Vegas gets the look they want on a reload (which they haven’t been able to do much this series) and Marner’s shot doesn’t even get to the net because it goes off Stone in front. This is where Vegas gets a favorable matchup with their super line out against Stankoven (a matchup Carolina struggled with when the game opened up) so it will be interested to see if they try to target this line at home.

Now some of the drawbacks.

The main thing I didn’t like about this line is that I felt Marner was kind of a secondary player here & his chances to make an impact were limited because there’s only one puck to go around. Here he helps force a turnover in the neutral zone with Eichel & Stone going the other way. From here, he’s basically out of the play and Eichel’s troubles with hitting the net continue on the counter-attack chance. Tortorella has said a few times he thinks Eichel is close and even went as far to say that Game 5 will be his best of the series. While that wasn’t the case, he got plenty of chances to break the game open for Vegas. The downside was Marner didn’t get as much of an opportunity. He had 9 zone entries, six of them were dump-ins, Carolina having someone in his face whenever he got the puck in between the blue lines, and finished the game with only two shots & no primary shot assists. If this is the trade-off with Eichel getting a chance to run the show, Carolina will take it. This is super risky, but Carolina is in the position where they need him to stay cold for just one more game.

As for the Carolina side, there isn’t much to talk about in terms of gaudy stats or who showed out offensively, but I did want to touch on some of the roles of the lines.

Throughout the series, Carolina’s always had a different line doing a scoring and another one doing the play-driving or creating offense in volume. Sometimes it’s Stankoven’s line scoring with Aho’s line getting a lot of entries & perimeter shots & other times it’s been Staal scoring with Stankoven’s line doing the possession work. This past game it was the later with Aho adding a much-needed strike off a line change. It’s been interesting to watch in action but I do wonder if tonight is when we finally see someone have that huge game for Carolina to seal the deal.

Speaking of which, I want to make a bold prediction for tonight’s goal scorer. Alexander Nikishin has been just a guy this series & for pretty much the entire playoff run. Tonight is where he becomes a difference maker.

Enjoy Game 6.

This is going to be a shorter post & most of it is me admitting I was wrong about a few things. The first one being me a the end of last season saying the Hurricanes should look into moving on from Jordan Staal. He had been with the team for 12 years and appeared to go as far as they could go with him playing a key role. Rod Brind’Amour heavily relies on him (try calling him the 3C in his presence) and was always the de-facto 2C playing big minutes in the playoffs with little offensive production to back it up. Behind him was Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who is a low-offense but reliable player making $4.5 mil. and there was no offensive pop in the middle of the lineup. My stance was they should move on from one or the other because the Staal crutch was becoming more of a burden with nobody else picking up the slack.

A series of moves happened that made this irrelevant. The Hurricanes couldn’t find a 2C solution in the market, so they moved Logan Stankoven to the middle and were committed to making him work in that spot. He played center for the entire season in an offense-focused role that didn’t really see the playoff until around January where his line with Taylor Hall & Jackson Blake were a threat to score every single night. That slotted Jordan Staal properly in a defensive/play-driving role and alongside him was free agent signing Nikolaj Ehlers, who found himself on this line after going scoreless in the first nine games of the year alongside Sebastian Aho. What seemed like a demotion ended up being the best thing that could happen to the club. Staal had arguably his best season as a Hurricane, scoring 20 goals for only second time in 13 seasons and Ehlers had a career high in points, thriving in this role while being supplemented with top power play time. Staal has notoriously struggled to score with Carolina, seeing his on-ice shooting percentage over in the 6-8% range for most of his career. Ehlers is the one guy to buck this trend and it’s fitting that he got setup on Staal’s game winner. It’s also fitting that the Hall-Stankoven-Blake line did most of the heavy lifting early in the game to give the Canes a hot start before Vegas inevitably tied the game.

Now let’s talk about the game, some other things I was wrong about and who I probably owe an apology to.

In what has been an ongoing trend, we had yet another game with a close 5v5 scoring chance count where the chances came in waves rather than going back-and-forth. Carolina had an 8-3 edge in the first 15 minutes, followed by Vegas taking 10 of the next 16, but only registering one scoring chance after Staal’s game-winner with 13 minutes left. This is why the game felt more tilted for Vegas than the stats indicate. The Hurricanes could contain, but they couldn’t create and every mistake they made ended up in a fire drill for Vegas. This isn’t to say the Knights defense have played a flawless game (see Theodore on the GWG), but the moments where Carolina has broken down have looked really ugly.

I was particularly hard on both Slavin, Chatfield and Walker in this game. A bad line change from the forwards led to Mark Stone getting a breakway for a first goal, which looked like a play that Slavin could recover from & eliminate, but he was toast the second the puck crossed the blue line. It’s things like that that make you concerned the more this series drags on because Slavin (and most of this Carolina defense) rely so much on their skating to recover and take away scoring chances at the last second. If they can’t do that, you get moments where it looks like they have no structure. K’Andre Miller and Sean Walker have also struggled mightily with the Marner matchup and I was pretty hard on Walker for some of his decision making.

Miller didn’t have a good game either, I didn’t like his gap on the Howden goal and thought he could have closed on him instead of trying to block the shot & screen Bussi in the process. Walker also made a weak shot block attempt on Karlsson’s goal where the puck went right through him, but his play on the 3-3 goal ticked me off when I watched it live because it’s connected to the theme of this team’s offense going quiet and playing disconnected after the first 15 minutes.

I’m not saying he should have forced a pass to Jarvis here or that Jarvis himself isn’t at fault for not keeping this puck in, but this was one of the few promising looking rushes Carolina had all period. The one thing you can’t do is miss the net as badly as he did and basically give up possession when you have some numbers going the other way. I also have an issue where he shot the puck, as there was al most a zero percent chance of it finding the back of the net and Jarvis isn’t even driving the net for a rebound. It’s just one of the many examples of disjointed offense from Carolina outside of Stankoven’s line (who responded really well after a tough Game 3).

That said, after rewatching the entire game, Slavin & Walker did a lot of good things that I didn’t notice as much on the broadcast. Slavin was only on the ice for eight Vegas shots, was the most involved he’s been offensively and cleaned up a major sore spot in his game, which is failed exits & botched retrievals (went a perfect 18/18 on puck retrievals, turning 8 into controlled exits). Walker also had a clean game on breakouts and was the team’s most physically engaged defenseman alongside Chatfield. As a whole, the entire group didn’t make a lot of mistakes, it’s just whenever they did Vegas got a scoring chance out of it and it stuck out more. It does make me wonder how healthy all of them are because the mobility of this group was a strength and it’s where they’re getting exposed now. If a forward is relatively out of position or gets beat, it ends up in a fire drill and this is where I’m the most concerned about the rest of the series, even if they won this game.

Individual Stats

Carolina

I’m going to use this to talk about Sebastian Aho (and Svechnikov to a lesser degree). This was their worst game of the series by far. It was kind of annoying to watch because the discourse around them has been rotten because neither has scored much these playoffs. Most of the good work they do is getting unnoticed and they put up their first real stinker in this one. The lack of offense is a real problem and while Eichel is going through similar issues, this performance had me real concerned if either can make an impact at 5v5 offensively.

The best way I can describe their game right now is they look like they’re playing with a shot clock. Everything is so rushed even if it’s not going to the net and Aho looks so frustrated with the puck right now, which is honestly making things worse because he’s trying to force everything. The other part of is this is how often they’re chasing the play & burning up their energy on the backcheck. While they’ve been good in this part of the game, they’ve been limited to one-and-done looks whenever they had the chance to go the other way.

That said, I want to give them some credit where it’s due because when the game got to lockdown time, they did their job.

A pretty bad shift offensively, but Aho stayed engaged on the backcheck and killed a shift from the super line of Eichel, Marner & Stone. Sometimes the playoffs are about contributing whenever you can when the puck isn’t settling for you and killing shifts from Vegas’ top trio was key in this game. Carolina’s got the depth advantage & this is how it can actually pay off. Aho and Eichel have basically canceled eachother out at 5v5 so far, which one of them actually scores will probably decide the series. I would like to see them try some different things on the cycle, though because the double-screen play has run its course but that’s part of the limitations with Martinook.

Taking some points from the Hall-Stankoven-Blake line, there are some examples of how to get to the interior from controlling the perimeter.

This was Hall’s best game and part of it was from how strong he played while stationary, not trying to beat defenders on his own or make the simple play, but using his linemates as an outlet to get the controlled entry & work the give-and-go game. Blake also made a couple of good plays physically to get posession back and eventually the middle of the ice opened up from VGK trying to challenge and guys getting caught on the wrong side of the puck. You have to win puck battles, but the support also has to be there from the wingers and we didn’t see much of that from Aho’s line because one or two guys are playing too spaced out or camped out in front of the net. Not that shots with traffic is bad, but getting a one-timer look like this obviously a higher quality chance.

Vegas

Carolina needed to win this game, if only because they kept Marner from running wild on them and losing the depth matchup might have been curtains for the team with the top line in a rut. Eichel is going through a similar issue right now, although this game you could argue he was unlucky to have only two shots at even strength. His best chances were his one-timer on the power play and the chance off the draw with the empty net that he just missed on. The Canes have frustrated him to a degree, forcing three failed entries but Eichel’s had his chances to create and there were a few close call that the Hurricanes might have gotten lucky on.

I mentioned in the last post that Eichel is easier for the Hurricanes to defend because he plays slower and tries to wait out the defense. The defense just has to stay on in front of him & Walker does a good job of that here. He kind of throws it blindly at the net and it’s basically a 50/50 puck that goes wide (I couldn’t tell if Stone got it). There’s another close call right after with Walker getting in front of Stone again & creating a tougher shot that he can’t finish. This was VGK’s last flurry before they pulled the goalie & something Carolina probably thinks they can live with because the chances had to go through layers of traffic.

I’m not super optimistic about the rest of this series but this Canes team has been full of surprises & I’m not sure we could have asked for a better Final as hockey fans.

There’s a lot of shit that happens in a game and the truth is, only 20% of it ends up really “mattering” at the end of the day. At least to most people, coaches are a different breed. I’m not a coach and have to catch myself from over-analyzing the game because not everyone is going to care about the details or small things your team did well in a game they lost 5-2. I just hate doomposting and don’t find it productive or entertaining so I’m usually neck deep in whatever the details of the game were.

That is where I thought this game was heading and then the Hurricanes did the unthinkable, scoring three goals in less than a minute and tying the game on the power play late in the third period. Even if they ended up losing in double overtime, my thoughts on the game echo that Torts clip, because they had an dreadful 15 minutes where everything went wrong. It took only one period for them to make that irrelevant and I just want to give some credit where it’s due because I’m not sure if other Hurricanes teams would have been able to pick themselves off the floor like that. Some fans were asking if there are any positives to take away from that loss and the only thing I could say is they have some form of “it,” meaning they keep pulling themselves back into games where no lead looks insurmountable. The downside is that I’m not sure if it’s enough.

The Game Score leaderboard does a better job of illustrating this.

The two best players in the series have been Mitch Marner and Shea Theodore. Carolina has a lot of guys playing well, but nobody really playing at a great level offensively. Which could ultimately be their downfall. In the first two games, Marner was finding small pockets of the game to dominate, creating 2-3 extremely high quality scoring chances either from behind the goal line or on a play where he was getting checked hard. Those are the things that are tough/impossible to defend because it’s just a great player executing. He had a couple of moments like that early in Game 3 as well.

This is how the Canes are trying to contain Marner & he can still find openings. Miller engages with him at the blue line to force a delayed dump-in on the other side, which has Marner as the first forechecker & Jarvis in a pretty helpless position to get the puck out on his off-side with Howden coming right at him. A recurring theme for Carolina has been bad breakouts & this is another one here because Jarvis has nowhere to go with the puck & Miller trying to keep his check on Marner. VGK quickly gets the puck to the net & Marner retrieves it instead of going for a tip, he draws two Carolina defenders & makes a quick exchange with Howden for another quick shot at the net with a screen.

It’s an okay chance and one you live with if you’re Carolina given the situation. Albeit that’s a shot Marner can bury if he has time. They also have the follow-up play with Hanifin getting it to the net with Howden in front. Again, Marner is going to find these small openings at least a few times a game. In the second period, he got six of them and most of them were self-inflicted errors on Carolina’s part.

Marner finsihed the game with 9 shots, 8 scoring chances, 15 setups, 3 scoring chance assists, 15 zone entries, 9 controlled entries with 5 of those leading to a scoring chance. Easily the best performance of anyone of the playoffs so far & the crazy part is he could have had more in this period alone. There seemed to be a wave of bad things happening to Carolina starting with that inexplicable too many men penalty that led to Hertl’s power play goal & it just snowballed for the next 10 minutes. Marner got a gift with Sean Walker deflecting in his centering pass to make it 2-0, but everything after that was earned. I want to highlight the 3-0 goal in particular because it all starts from the Vegas zone.

First of all, it’s a bad matchup with Marner out against Carolina’s fourth line (with a laboring Carrier to boot). Second of all, the puck is in Vegas’ end but they’re the team applying the pressure. Carolina looks like they’re getting forechecked in their own zone and Marner is the one starting it along the wall. It’s a key factor because the Canes then have everyone flood to the right side and Marner can kind of pick his spot here to go the other way if the Knights get posession. They do & there is nobody covering for Walker after Miller misses the poke-check. Marner is in alone with Carrier as the last guy back. His clearing attempt is a weak one and Miller ends up colliding with him, which opens the door for McNabb to find Marner for a tap-in goal.

I usually post the game stats in their own section, but this fits with what we’re talking about here.

Remember how Vegas had only one shot off the rush in Game 1? They’ve flipped the script here & the counter-attack chances are the main driver of it. The turnovers that happened in the defensive zone in Game 1 are now happening in the offensive zone & that’s led to Vegas going the other way. Marner can create time & space on his own, but the sloppy, disorganized offense opened the door for him to really put a beating on the Canes in this second period. Things settled after that with Carolina’s comeback effort and not having to press as much in the offensive zone, which meant fewer counter-attack chances for Vegas, but that does bring me back to my original point which is Marner finding pockets of the game, which he does more as a playmaker.

Carolina saw what Marner can do when the game opens up & this is where he’s dangerous when the game slows down. Scoring chances are hard to come by in the doldrums, but you get openings like this when Carolina makes a brutal line change & VGK catches them on the stretch pass with Marner already at the blue line and Karlsson in alone for a chance that almost ended the game. Another example of this came before Theodore’s winner in 2OT where Tortorella loaded up the top line with him, Eichel & Stone.

Not that Carolina doesn’t have to worry about Marner whenever he’s on the ice, but him repeating that second period is unlikely because a few of those opportunities were gift-wrapped by the Canes pressing or just being out of sorts getting back into the play. The first overtime chance & this one are what they have to worry about because it’s Marner dominating within the confides of the game. It’s also a good example of why they’ve been able to contain Eichel to a degree but Marner has been a problem.

Eichel likes to hold onto the puck for a long time & let things develop, whereas the puck is gone within 1-2 seconds whenever Marner gets it and someone is usually open. Not that Marner doesn’t like to hang around the perimeter too, but he can usually find someone who is open from there and his linemates are never stationary. Torts hasn’t used this line much, but it’s potentially the three best forwards in the series on one unit & you can see how dangerous they can be when they’re together. These are the things Marner has done all series that make him lethal, see Karlsson’s goal in the first game. Carolina can only control so much when they don’t have the best player on the ice and Marner having three or four moments like this is the type of thing that can end this series quickly.

Individual Stats

Carolina:

Carolina’s lines were all kinds of scrambled with Brind’Amour taking the blender out and other guys double shifting for Carrier. Aho and Svechnikov look like they’ve found something is the one positive I can take away from the new lines, at least in the first period. Jarvis also had one of their better chances off the rush early in the game with Ehlers. The downside is Stankoven’s line had their worst game of the series, getting the worst of the Marner matchup at times.

The stats follow a common theme of a lot of Carolina guys playing well & showing signs of life with nobody really taking over the game. Jarvis was the closest they had but it’s still a by-committee effort. The only one who has been able to do that this series was Ehlers in Game 1 and they' haven’t seen that version of him since. I will give Aho his due for how he played in the comeback effort. The keep-in on the power play goal that setup the play to Staal was huge and I loved his tenacity on the 4-2 goal where he was constantly on the puck.

This is the Sebastian Aho Carolina needs. You might not be able to dominate the game, but you can do small things to change possession when VGK can’t make a clean play. There’s been a lot of moments like that with how much disruption Carolina’s forecheck has caused at times. Eventually, the passing lanes open up & you can make the higher impact plays. This is why I didn’t hate the shuffle of putting him with Martinook (even if this came off a broken line). You get Aho to be a little more puck-hog and good things start to happen for him & everyone else.

Vegas

It was the Mitch Marner show and there’s not much else that needs to be said. Although Stone has been a growing concern all series, if only because every single time he gets the puck it’s a high-impact play.

There’s a lot of shit that happens in a game and the truth is, only 20% of it ends up really “mattering” at the end of the day. At least to most people, coaches are a different breed. I’m not a coach and have to catch myself from over-analyzing the game because not everyone is going to care about the details or small things your team did well in a game they lost 5-2. I just hate doomposting and don’t find it productive or entertaining so I’m usually neck deep in whatever the details of the game were.

That is where I thought this game was heading and then the Hurricanes did the unthinkable, scoring three goals in less than a minute and tying the game on the power play late in the third period. Even if they ended up losing in double overtime, my thoughts on the game echo that Torts clip, because they had an dreadful 15 minutes where everything went wrong. It took only one period for them to make that irrelevant and I just want to give some credit where it’s due because I’m not sure if other Hurricanes teams would have been able to pick themselves off the floor like that. Some fans were asking if there are any positives to take away from that loss and the only thing I could say is they have some form of “it,” meaning they keep pulling themselves back into games where no lead looks insurmountable. The downside is that I’m not sure if it’s enough.

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One of the main reasons I like doing what I do is it sort of forces me to watch the game with a more rational lens. There are plenty of games that are dreadful to watch as a fan & sometimes I want to see if things were really as bad as it looked live. Most of the time it is, but you also see more of how it was a couple of things that went off the rails & give more credit to the other team for making things difficult. Especially when we get to this time of the year. It’s kind of a double-edged sword because getting to be reactionary and emotional is what being a sports fan is all about. At the same time, I can’t wade into the hot take fests or pull the “they don’t want it bad enough” card when things don’t go right without it feeling disingenuous. It’s just not what I do with how I cover the game.

That said, it was looking like a big challenge for me not to do that watching Game 2. As a hockey fan, there is no worse situation than watching your team trail by two or more goals late into the game. Every single possession looks like they’re skating through cement and anything resembling a scoring chance disappears within seconds because the hockey gods like to mix in some sardonic torture while you helplessly stare at the screen. I don’t like telling fans how they should feel, but I try to act as the voice of reason to a fault sometimes & the Hurricanes were making that very difficult for about 35 minutes. Then things changed without 10 minutes to go in the third period.

They only registered one scoring chance here, but this was after a stretch where Carolina had only three even strength scoring chances over 30 minutes, while playing from behind no less. This was looking like one of those games where they would get all of their chances early, couldn’t capitalize and Vegas would dictate the terms after that. This shift didn’t result in a goal, but it was the first sign of life they showed in a long time, so it gave the fans some sense of hope.

Not only because they were creating offense, but from how they were generating it. Not all sustained zone time is created equal, because shots off turnovers or a few seconds after you gain possession are more dangerous than ones where you methodically work the puck around the zone, as we saw in this game. Look at the shots here, Ehlers quickly goes low-to-high and K’Andre Miller doesn’t waste anytime getting it to the net, Staal also wins a box-out against Hanifin to get the deflection & make this a semi-dangerous chance. They retrieve & after a bouncing puck sequence, Jarvis goes across the ice to Ehlers for another quick shot. Then they get another quick one after Walker keeps the puck in at the point, also making his way to the slot for another layer of traffic while Jarvis posts-up at the side for a rebound. The sequence ends with a couple of shots into open nets from bad angles, but they get Vegas scrambling a little bit & they start to show some cracks in their armor.

Again, they didn’t score but this was the first time Carolina’s offense looked more like a five-man unit and it wasn’t coming from skating the puck around the zone trying to skate around the perimeter. Instead it was a lot of quick passes, quick shots & players off the puck in motion to give the defenders more to think about & they got a couple of shots into open nets with the goaltender scrambling (albeit from awkward angles). Again, no goal but a sign of life. A couple shifts later, Stankoven scores forcing a turnover off an offensive zone draw & the fanbase has some belief again.

Managing the emotions in this series has been a gauntlet to say the least. You can make an argument that both teams could be up 2-0 right now because they’ve had stretches in each game where they controlled play. It’s truly a real best-on-best matchup where every game is oging to be decided by who makes the last mistake or the final play.

Dimitri Filipovic & I discussed this at length on the PDOCast yesterday, but it’s also a low-event series in terms of shot volume. There’s been a lot of blocked shots, neutral zone shots & fanned shots that inflating the totals in the play-by-play, but it’s been more of a low-volume, high quality series for both teams. Vegas moreso than Carolina, but even the Canes have been pretty selective with the shots they’re taking. Perhaps that why the shift I posted earlier was such a huge swing for them in the game, because it was the one time they weren’t being overly methodical with trying to get the puck to a dangerous area & just getting quick shots to the net. Vegas has also been getting rid of the puck before they’ve had a chance to cycle so it’s gone both ways.

This series has been wild, unpredictable and a style clash, so I’m expecting it to go the distance. Who has the advantage with the series shifting to Las Vegas?

Game 2 Stats

A few things changed from Game 2. Most importantly for Carolina, they cleaned up their exits and didn’t let Vegas clog them up in their own zone. The tradeoff was they were weaker off the rush and had to play more of this game trying to create in the offensive zone, which opened the door for Vegas to counter-attack them a couple of times. Both of VGK’s goals came off what started as nothing plays from their own zone that turned into breakways, the second one coming off a failed power play. I do want to highlight the exit on the first goal, though.

This is such a good play by William Karlsson & it requires a lot of trust in him & Marner being on the same page. The Hurricanes get the situation they want initially, forcing a turnover and hemming Vegas in for a few seconds. Even after Hall turns the puck over, they get a quick shot to the net with traffic. Karlsson makes a great retrieval behind the net, skates it around and reverses it to another forward one-handed when he sees two Hurricanes on him. Honestly, in most situations there is no way this play results in a dangerous chance given the numbers Carolina has back & how many VGK guys are in their own zone. In most cases it’s an excellent exit to retrieve pressure, but Howden gets a step on Walker & scores. Howden gets the spoils, but I was really impressed with Karlsson on the breakout, giving Marner a lot of space to clear the puck & make it all happen.

This also illustrates how close this series is going to be. Carolina did what they wanted to do here with both defensemen staying back to prevent the jailbreak pass from happening. Walker just got beat, which can’t happen but it’s also the Final against a team that’s firing on all cylinders, so it’s going to happen at some point. Similar to the goals VGK scored in Game 1 off the cycles where they were just a step ahead of Carolina.

If you’re the Hurricanes, you’re probably happy with your defensive performance overall, as Vegas didn’t create any high danger passes, which killed them in Game 1, but now VGK is getting rush looks so it’s becoming a question of what type of offense they’re more comfortable giving up. The rush looks they gave up were the result of their guys just getting overpowered, but you can say the same thing about the goal line/cycle chances too, so this will be interesting to watch the rest of the way.

Carolina’s own offense also took a step back from Game 1 with a couple moments of them having to manufacture some offense out of nothing. There is no better example of this than the Mark Jankowski goal and I want to take a minute to appreciate how many things had to go right for that to happen. First, it came off an defensive zone faceoff after an icing. Tortorella sent out Eichel’s line against Carolina’s fourth line & they win the faceoff. Rasmus Andersson & Ivan Barbashev have a miscommunication while William Carrier also goes to the point to run interference. The puck goes to the left corner where the only players close to it are Frederik Andersen & Eric Robinson. Jankowski & Carrier bolt out of the zone and this happens.

This was the fourth line’s only shot of the game and it comes off an unbelievable play by Carrier. Between catching the puck, dragging his skate to keep the play onside, having a 210+ lb defenseman tackling him and making the pass on the seat of his pants, this had to be a 0.05% probability type of goal and it might have saved Carolina’s season. Carrier has done a lot of unappreciated work these playoffs with how good he is in the doldrums of the game. He was brought in for his size & physicality, but he’s always had some skill to his game even if he doesn’t get to show it much in a forechecking role. He could put up 10 points all season & still contribute with how much he helps tilt the ice & this is the series where he was going to have a moment to shine.

While this got them into the game, Carolina’s dormant power play coming to life is what won it. What was interesting is how both goals came off some pretty basic plays that they were failing to execute early on. They never lost the zone after the faceoff win on the 3-2 goal with Jordan Staal tipping in a Shayne Gostisbehere shot, another moment where things had to fall into place because he was 100% shooting for Aho’s stick before it got lifted. The second goal was a one-timer look from the top of the zone to the left circle that hasn’t looked dangerous all post-season. They got a little more space at the point this time & Jarvis aboslutely wired it past Hart to win the game. If Vegas still had Brayden McNabb available, I’m not sure if either goal happens, but Carolina’s power play needed some kind of spark and maybe just getting back to basics was it.

Individual Stats

• Game Score might not reflect it, but Shea Theodore has been the best player on the ice all series. He has been a nuisance for shutting down Carolina’s rush game, playing on his off-side no less. Aho hasn’t been able to find a way around him and Jarvis has gotten baited by trying to cut to the middle against him & it has killed a lot of Carolina’s rush atttempts. He also handled a monster workload with McNabb’s injury, starting 24 of Vegas’ exits with 14 of them leading to controlled breakouts.

• The 4th line is definitely getting undersold here, but again that was their only shot of the game and sometimes looking at things from a volume perspective isn’t the best. On the flipside, Nikolaj Ehlers posted 12 shot contributions with only one of them being a scoring chance. Some of that is a little misleading because his line was generating chances where he was the tertiary setup guy, but Ehlers impacts the game differently than your usual game-breaker. Sometimes you’re going to have games like this where he’s limited to setting the table from everyone else & others he’ll be the monster off the rush you saw at times in the playoffs. Which one will we get now that the series moves to Vegas?

• Slavin/Chatfield were a mess and it didn’t look any better in the rewatch. Chatfield’s been the biggest culprit with things being too slow in the offensive zone, as he always has to take a second to either settle the puck down or deciding where to go next & that is what kills possessions in the playoffs. Slavin almost cost them the game with a ridiculous turnover that led to the Vegas disallowed goal. I’ve worried about Slavin’s health this year, but the decision making from him has been straight up bizarre.

• The matchups will be interesting to follow, as Brind’Amour has put Staal against Eichel, which worked in his favor this game while Stankoven has gone Karlsson & Marner with the Aho line getting the spoils of the matchup (which is still Hertl/Stone). The Marner line has been a problem for Carolina all series & they’re the perfect counter to the Stankoven line with how high in the zone they like to play on the forecheck. Stankoven & Blake can forecheck, but the rush chances are what makes them lethal & Marner’s line has caught them on the wrong side of the puck a few times. Marner’s also a very disruptive defender, so these three haven’t been able to skate away from coverage as easily as they usually do. Granted, part of that is because Hall has been a mess with the puck but VGK’s also forced the issue with him. He’s at the top of the list of guys who need to be better along with Aho.

This game is what the playoffs are all about. Two teams exchanging body blows, great chances at both ends and everything coming down to the last shot (or shot block in this case). It’s a big missed opportunity for Carolina, considering how many things went in their favor, scoring two early goals and coming back to tie the game twice after Vegas flipped the script on them. Carolina hasn’t had to play from behind much and the Knights were borderline impossible to rally agianst last round, so those two goals should have been a huge mental boost. Tomas Hertl put that to rest about four minutes later, beating the check of Shayne Gostisbehere by just a stride and that was all he needed to score the game-winning goal.

The last second shot from Alexander Nikishin bouncing off the knee of Mitch Marner wide of the net illustrated how damn close this series is. I don’t think either team would argue they played their best game, or even a good game when they review the tape and see all the mistakes on both sides. Carolina’s defending and puck management was a level of bad that we haven’t seen from them this post-season and Vegas might argue the same thing when they reviewed some of the goals they gave up, but that’s what playoff life is when you’re this deep into it. Carolina hasn’t seen a team that can put the screws to them territorially & execute like Vegas did to them and it showed in both the second and third period.

Likewise, Vegas found out the hard way that they haven’t played a counter-attacking team like Carolina yet but they adjusted after taking a beating in the first 10 minutes. How do the Hurricanes respond? Do they need to adjust or just stick to their game and hope their top guys play better? The stats paint an interesting picture.

Game Statcap

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Vegas generated only one shot off the rush all game, which game two minutes after Shea Theodore scored to make it 2-1 late in the first. It’s interesting to me that teams the Hurricanes struggle with the most in the playoffs are teams that play like everyone thinks Rod Brind’Amour has the Hurricanes programmed, which is “bumper car hockey” to borrow another Daryl Reaugh-ism. Ottawa tried playing this way and kept the chance-count very close in their series and Florida has been their nightmare opponent playing this dump-and-chase, forecheck dominant style. The difference with this Vegas team is that it looked like a mid-game adjustment after Eichel’s turnover on the second Ehlers goal. They were playing more patient and scored all five of their goals off the forecheck, three of them coming off failed clears by the Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes man-to-man defensive zone coverage is always a heavy topic of discussion in their previous playoff runs and you saw some of it’s flaws on the Vegas goals. Not getting pucks out was more of an issue to me, but Gostisbehere losing his footing for only a second gave Hertl just enough space to make that shot on the game winner. Not taking anything away from the great backhand pass from Colton Sissons to set that up or Hertl not wasting any time getting it to the net. Same goes for Aho chasing behind the net & leaving William Karlsson open on his goal, which was made possible by Marner making a great play behind the goal line. Vegas also had some critical mistakes that the Hurricanes executed on, but they got the last play when it counted.

This game was also more about when each team got their shots rather than the grand total, as Carolina outchanced Vegas 6-2 in the first period and outchanced 11-9 the rest of the way, with all of those VGK chances coming off long-sustained shifs stacked on top of eachother. That failed exit & botched retrieval rate is something very uncharacteristic of the Hurricanes and it was the root of their problems, from not being able to generate offense to giving up 8 high danger passes to the Golden Knights.

This is a small play, but you see the bones of Vegas disrupting Carolina’s breakout, not being overly aggressive but pestering the defensemen enough & keeping the puck moving down low. Carolina’s forwards are already thinking offense and are on the wrong side of the puck by the time they go to pressure & Vegas forces them into sending the puck out of play. The next sequence was the defensive zone draw that led to Karlsson’s goal. This was a common theme for the rest of the game.

You see both sides of the gamble Carolina takes here with how much pressure they put on the puck & how often the forwards are looking to go the other way. Walker has no play with the puck on his first touch, so it gets turned over with Blake already out of the zone. There’s layers to the forecheck as Howden follows up and Andersson pinches on Hall to force another turnover. He goes behind the net and the Hurricanes coverage gets messed up with Hall & Walker running into eachother and Blake circling around his check misjudging where the puck is. Luckily, Miller is there to make the shot a little tougher for Karlsson, but Vegas can setup again with no Carolina player in position to get the rebound.

The Knights try a play to the net that gets broken up & now Stankoven can go the other way with the VGK defensemen giving him some space. There’s no direct play off the rush, but they manage to setup an okay chance to Miller in the slot before trying a high-cycle with Hall that gets broken up. The way Carolina recovered from this is how their defending looks when it works. There’s pressure on the puck carrier & everyone is staying with their checks so the only play open is the low percentage shot, which opens up a transition opportunity the other way. It’s just a matter of the forwards making sure the forwards & the defense are on the same page on the breakouts & having everyone stay disciplined with their checks. VGK’s defensemen were really effective with their pinches to get Carolina running around a little more than they were used to, which had a domino effect on their offense.

Eventually they broke through in the third period. Something I wanted to see more of were Carolina’s defensemen be a little more aggressive & involved with the cycle. Vegas’ goals looked like all five guys working as a unit while the Canes defense were backing off in the offensive zone so they wouldn’t get burned on a rush the other way. Once they figured out it wasn’t a threat, you started to see them get more involved. K’Andre Miller stepped up at the right time on Staal’s goal off a Hanifin turnover and Gostisbehere jumped in at the right time off a faceoff on the game tying goal.

The one play that stuck out to me, though was the one they didn’t score on.

The top line did not have a good night at all, but they had a couple of chances to atone for it here. This was the only time I thought Carolina really played a five-man unit in the offensive zone with everyone on the same page. Starting with the defensive zone, Miller comes in to help Svechnikov get a puck out, Vegas has to back off and Miller finds Aho for a clean zone entry. There’s no play to the net, so Jarvis goes around to where Miller is waiting while both Aho & Svechnikov go to the net. Jarvis gets a decent chance on the rebound with Barbashev watching the puck & he smartly directs Dorofyev into Aho along the boards where they send the puck deep again. Svechnikov follows the puck around to pressure Hanifin into a turnover, Aho is also there to run interference and Walker makes a timely pinch to free the puck. From then, they setup their triangle play and get their only good chance of the game.

Everyone made mistakes in this game, I thought Shea Theodore was the best player on the ice and even he was dinged for a couple Carolina goals, but the plays he made with the puck negated it. Jack Eichel also had a turnover that led to Carolina’s second goal, but he quickly made up for it with his play to Barbashev that tied the game. There wasn’t enough of that from Aho’s line, but it extends to the defense too because they were disconnected for most of the game. Still, they figured it out near the end and hopefully for Carolina it’s a good omen for Game 2.

Individual Stats

Continuing the theme of disconnection, the Hurricanes didn’t have a line where all three players were going. You could argue the Staal line, but Martinook had a couple brutal failed clears that the Knights capitalized on. Aho is taking a little too much heat for his performance, because I thought his linemates let him down more than anything. Jarvis stopped most of Carolina’s rush offense on his own, getting checked off the puck or looking for a pass instead of making a direct play & I thought Svechnikov had an awful game with four failed zone entries on nine attempts. Aho needs to take some ownership himself, as he only shot the puck twice & neither one made it on goal, but he was playing a one-man show. That said, Jarvis still got three chances and Aho started to put a game together in the third period, so there are signs of life here. Their playoff run has been more about lack of conversion & execution rather than them playing poorly, but this game infringed on that territory.

Stankoven & Blake also had strong games on the second line, although Stankoven not scoring on that breakaway to make it 3-1 ended up being huge later. Still, a highly productive game for that duo and that was with Taylor Hall having his worst night of the playoffs. Overall, they got what they wanted from the middle-six but obviously need more from the top line.

The Vegas side was all about not wasting their shots. Howden/Marner/Karlsson being the prim example of this with all but three of their shot contributions being registered as scoring chances. They didn’t get anything in transition all night & weren’t spamming point shots, so this speaks volumes about how creative & selective they are in the offensive zone. Not seen here is Shea Theodore’s excellent night, even outside of the goal he scored. The Vegas defenseman allowed only three controlled entries on 12 targets, breaking up four of Carolina’s controlled entry attempts and turning 6 of his 11 puck retrievals into controlled exits. His game has come such a long way from even a few years ago when he was mostly known for his point-production, as he is a guy who can take over the game in all three zones now.

Again, this felt like a missed opportunity for the Hurricanes but I was also encouraged by a few things even in the loss. I’m not sure other iterations of this club would have came back twice against an opponent as tough as Vegas. We’ve seen them get frustrated, over-aggressive and out of sorts when they fall behind against a tougher team before, but this group is showing more resilience now. I’m not sure what adjustments they’ll make for Game 2, but a piece of unsolicited advice I’ll throw out there now is putting Alexander Nikishin on one of the power plays. Gostisbehere has kind of been a black hole at the point and there’s no shooting threat high (or anywhere really). They tried to use that one-timer to tie the game late and maybe that’s a wrinkle they can throw into their gameplan for tonight. Hell, almost nothing else has worked on the power play and they’re running out of time for it to just “figure it out” like it does in the regular season.

This game is what the playoffs are all about. Two teams exchanging body blows, great chances at both ends and everything coming down to the last shot (or shot block in this case). It’s a big missed opportunity for Carolina, considering how many things went in their favor, scoring two early goals and coming back to tie the game twice after Vegas flipped the script on them. Carolina hasn’t had to play from behind much and the Knights were borderline impossible to rally agianst last round, so those two goals should have been a huge mental boost. Tomas Hertl put that to rest about four minutes later, beating the check of Shayne Gostisbehere by just a stride and that was all he needed to score the game-winning goal.

The last second shot from Alexander Nikishin bouncing off the knee of Mitch Marner wide of the net illustrated how damn close this series is. I don’t think either team would argue they played their best game, or even a good game when they review the tape and see all the mistakes on both sides. Carolina’s defending and puck management was a level of bad that we haven’t seen from them this post-season and Vegas might argue the same thing when they reviewed some of the goals they gave up, but that’s what playoff life is when you’re this deep into it. Carolina hasn’t seen a team that can put the screws to them territorially & execute like Vegas did to them and it showed in both the second and third period.

Likewise, Vegas found out the hard way that they haven’t played a counter-attacking team like Carolina yet but they adjusted after taking a beating in the first 10 minutes. How do the Hurricanes respond? Do they need to adjust or just stick to their game and hope their top guys play better? The stats paint an interesting picture.

Game Statcap

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Vegas generated only one shot off the rush all game, which game two minutes after Shea Theodore scored to make it 2-1 late in the first. It’s interesting to me that teams the Hurricanes struggle with the most in the playoffs are teams that play like everyone thinks Rod Brind’Amour has the Hurricanes programmed, which is “bumper car hockey” to borrow another Daryl Reaugh-ism. Ottawa tried playing this way and kept the chance-count very close in their series and Florida has been their nightmare opponent playing this dump-and-chase, forecheck dominant style. The difference with this Vegas team is that it looked like a mid-game adjustment after Eichel’s turnover on the second Ehlers goal. They were playing more patient and scored all five of their goals off the forecheck, three of them coming off failed clears by the Hurricanes.

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In the summer of 2010, a network called Bloguin approached me about running a Carolina Hurricanes website. At the time I was entering my junior year of college & spent most of my free time watching hockey & all sports. I lived in Caps territory, but I always had a pulse on the Southeast Division. Not enough to consider myself a fan, but enough to where I felt like it was something I could pull off & not embarrass myself with.

I spent that summer learning as much about the team as I could and was dialed into every single game the next season. Eventually it became a routine for me and the Hurricanes were part of my life for the next 15 years. This in the early stages of what was a decade-long playoff drought for the team, but there were still a lot of us who showed up everyday to talk about the games or doing whatever we could to entertain ourselves & take attention away from how hopeless things looked on the ice at times. Every game felt like it was appointment viewing to me & that reached a new level during the team’s 2018-19 stretch where they finally ended their playoff drought.

Since then, things have settled. I’m in my mid-30’s with a two-year-old at home, so I’m not as invested in every game like I used to. This season was probably the least dialed-in I’ve been to every game, even after the playoffs began. The overtime games against Ottawa and Philadelphia were intense, but I felt like it was business as usual for the Canes & it didn’t have that same tense energy that the stretch in 2019 had. Games 2 & 3 against Montreal is when that spark returned. Those felt like do-or-die situations where every shot had you on the edge of your seat if you’re a Hurricanes fan. They were outplaying the Habs but still trapped in a tie game where one mistake could send the series off the rails. Once Nikolaj Ehlers scored in overtime, it felt like a weight was lifted off the fanbase’s shoulders even if all they did was tie the series. That was the first time I saw PNC Arena have the same level of juice it did in 2019 after Nino Niederreiter scored into an empty net to clinch a playoff spot.

I still talk to some of the same fans who were in my Tweetdeck mentions column every morning in 2012 (shoutout Carolyn, Leah & Tommy). Seeing their posts from Friday night brought back a lot of memories of those early days & how fun those rare wins were. Then there’s the others that I met during the brutal stages of the drought, fans who were at PNC every night and saw Cam Ward skate the puck into his own net or were at the game that got canceled because the ice melted (yes this actually happened). Reaching the playoffs felt like climbing the mountain seven years ago and it didn’t take long for expectations to rise. Getting out of the Conference Final is where the bar has been set the lately and now that they’re here, I’m doing my best to not take it for granted the next week because ask any team with a window how hard it is to make it this far.

As a fanalyst who has tracked the last few SCF’s just from a game coverage standpoint, having a vested interest in it will be weird but I’m excited about it. My Canes fandom is obviously prevelant in my writing but I’ll do my best to not be too in my feelings if there’s a game where things go off the rails.

With all that being said, let’s recap the Western Conference Final and do a deep dive into what Carolina can expect from Vegas on Tuesday.

Western Conference Recap

I don’t know what you do with this information if you’re Colorado except keeping it in mind when it comes to adjusting their roster in the off-season. It was closer than a tradtional sweep but they also played worse as the series went on and there were a few areas where Vegas had the edge. They converted a higher percentage of their entries to scoring chances, were more efficient at entering the zone in general (because they tried to carry the puck less) and turned more of their exits into offense.

It might not sound like mcuh, but the overall counts across the board are pretty close and that is enough to swing games in either direction when you fall into a shooting rut like the Avs did in the first two games. This is also where the game-by-game data tells a better story than just the overall stats.

If the rest of the series went the same as Game 1, we are probably talking about a Game 7 right now instead of previewing the Stanley Cup Final. Vegas survived the first game and then stifiled Colorado’s offense the rest of the way with everything hitting the fan in Game 7. I understand being concerned long-term if you’re a Colorado fan. You got swept after running away with the regular season & this team (most notably Mark Stone) was a nightmare for them in the playoffs back in 2021 as well. The Makar injury gives them enough of an out that they probably won’t do anything rash in the off-season, their cap sheet also puts them in a situation where they don’t have much of a choice but to run it back next year. When you talk about how tough it is just to make the Final, this Avs team is the best example. Which is saying a lot because they’ve won a Cup recently, but they’ve had dynasty-like expectations with this group and it’s never that easy.

So what went wrong and what can the Hurricanes learn from it? Let’s look at who was going and who wasn’t.

The Statistical Story

This is a lot to look at, so let’s zero in on a few things. First, MacKinnon still got his looks, there was just a drop-off after him and Vegas didn’t give him a ton of direct passing plays. Notice the drop from primary assists to chance assists, basically means Vegas gave the Avs their looks but they had to go through a layer of players to make anything happen.

The other thing is Brock Nelson, who had six chances in Game 1 and two clear-cut chances off the rush in Game 4. He didn’t score on any of them and there wasn’t much he could do about the last two. Even on the broadcast Ferraro was trying to think of something critical to say about the breakaway he didn’t score on and all he could come up with was “you have to find a way to beat the goaltender.” I understand it because Nelson was brought in to finish chances like that & has historically been a pretty good goal-scorer. At the same time, he got the chances you want and everyone runs into stretches where you just can’t find it for 6-10 games. Unfortunately for him it happened here.

To make things worse, the Avs middle-six was kind of one-dimensional in how they created their offense. Both Nelson & Kadri were primarily shooters with most of their setups going to the perimeter, Landeskog had a nice series but was the only one who could score, Lehkonen didnt’ generate much offense and Necas was a drag offensively. Necas had maybe the worst point-per-game statline on a losing team, because everyone is going to focus on him scoring only one goal and not care about the 12 assists in 13 games. This series was the only time I thought he was bad in the playoffs, though. Even in his most frustrating moments in Carolina, Necas was always generating offense. You could always nitpick at the quality of the chances he was generating, but he wasn’t even doing that in this series.

Zeroing in on some of his shifts does give us a look into what Carolina can expect when trying to beat this Vegas team off the rush and how tough it is to get through them from the perimeter. The reason I’m focusing on Necas is because the Avs second line had an issue with their guys not generating any looks through passing plays & he is the one guy who makes that happen. That and Carolina’s top guys are having a similar problem in their playoff ruin. Aho & Svechnikov haven’t gotten on the scoresheet much but they’re doing a lot of “stuff” and generating chances, Svech in particular through his passing out of the zone. You would expect the dam to break here, but Vegas defends better than any team they’ve seen so far & Necas ran into a lot of problems when he tried to cycle.

This is from Game 1 on a shift where Necas was on the top line with MacKinnon & Landeskog. He enters the zone, something he did okay at this series (66% Carry-in rate generating 3.54 chances off his entries) and tries to start a give-and-go with the defenseman Malinski with the payoff being a back-door pass to Landeskog in front of the net. The Knights are all over this. Theodore doesn’t budge from his spot and Marner dissects what the play is pretty easily. It gets broken up and Vegas starts the rush the other way instead of just clearing the puck, which is where they were the most dangerous because all four of their lines will do this & they don’t really telegraph when it’s going to happen either.

Vegas is similar to Florida in the sense that they lean more dump-and-chase, but they have guys who can carry the puck when he window is open & their workhorse guys are still dangerous when they are given the green light. Stone in particular was lethal with limited puck touches. Their top guys also sat around the 50-55% range instead of the 70-80% Carry-in range, so it was tougher for the Avs to figure out what they were going to do entering the zone. It also helps that Marner, Karlsson and Hertl worked their asses off on the forecheck this series and the lower line guys like Dowd used the transition game to help flip possession & kill the clock.

This is an interesting sequence because Dowd does what I just mentioned & gets a clean exit to get a line change, but turns the puck over back to Colorado but the Avs are also making a change & regrouping so it’s no big deal. Vegas gives Necas a pretty big cushion entering the zone to keep him from getting to the net and Necas has the right idea with getting the puck to Makar at the point to start a high-to-low play with Kadri & Nelson in front of the net. This draws two Vegas defenders to Makar & gives Necas a route back to the net with Kadri looking for a quick pass. Makar is just under so much pressure that the play isn’t clean & Kadri has to catch & settle the puck down before trying to advance it. It ends up being a scramble that Necas can’t get to in time and Vegas gets a clean exit again with Barbashev above the puck & Eichel coming back for support. The top five players in exits with possession for Vegas were all forwards (Barbashev, Sissons, Marner, Cole Smith, Stone) and you can see why with how they defend.

The defensemen are mostly there to take up space & disrupt while the forwards reap the spoils & try to go the other way. It doesn’t always lead to offense, but it keeps the attacking team on their heels a little bit because the threat is always there. Vegas has an arsenal of smart forwards who take good routes to pucks & know the right time to counter-attack. Carolina had to make a similar adjustment against the Canadiens after their disaster in Game 1, but the forward depth on this Vegas team is leagues beyond what they just saw from the Habs.

If there’s anything I would target, it’s the Rasmus Andersson/Noah Hanifin defense pairing. They’ve were the designated “absorb punishment” duo in the Colorado series & while they do have some offensive tools, they didn’t get much of a chance to use them.

While Vegas’ forwards had as clean of a series as you could ask for with breaking the puck out, their defense gave the Avs a lot of chances. Part of it is just how the series went & the role they were forced into, but that’s still a lot of botched retrievals and killed plays from their blue line. It ended up not mattering & this is where the Hurricanes can tilt the series because their forecheck can make a defensemen’s life a living hell. It’s just a matter of whether or not they can force the Knights forwards into some bad plays or create offense quicker off turnovers. The Stankoven line did a marvelous job of that in Game 3 & Aho is their best player at getting himself lost in coverage to get chances like this.

Here’s an Hanifin/Andersson sequence where Colorado gets a decent look, albeit one where Makar is hurt. Regardless, you see what this pair got reduced to in this series. Hanifin goes up the wall aimlessly from then it’s a puck-battle. Andersson engages in the play physically but Colorado comes up with the puck while Eichel goes down to help out. MacKinnon jumps in from the bench while Vegas floods that side, finds Makar and he gets a one-on-one situation with Hanifin, who tries to get in the way as much as possible and Andersson provides as much legal interference as possible on Landeskog to keep him from any rebound. Eichel & Dorofyev also drift down low & this ends up being a pretty weak chance along the ice. The ensuing clear attempt doesn’t get out of the zone and Colorado tries to setup another play with Makar at the right point. Eichel challenges it & makes the deflection to Landeskog a tough play & Barbashev gets the quick exit after this gets shut down.

It will not surprise me if most of the Hurricanes shifts look like this, especially if they end up playing from behind. I wouldn’t say it’s intentional from Vegas but rather taking what the game situation is giving to them because they aren’t going to make clean plays out of the zone 100% of the time, so they need some “survive and advance” element to their game. It sort of reminds me of what Carolina dealt with against Montreal with Alex Carrier & Kaiden Guhle where every shift was a sequence of them putting out their own fires until the roof caved in & Carolina got a couple of goals. There’s something to be said about teams being locked in defensively & not panicking when they’re running around in their own zone, but it always feels like it’s more results-driven than anything. Regardless, this is going to be the toughest matchup for Carolina. Coloardo has more high-end talent than them and couldn’t break through this defensive shell when the games got tough, so the Canes are going to heavily rely on tilting the ice to make Vegas defend 80% of the game. Can they do it? We shall see.

Enjoy the Final, a quick Carolina/Montreal recap is coming tomorrow or later today.

Also here’s a google worksheet to my tracking data from these playoffs. I posted this for my A3Z subscribers, but I’m willing to share it for subscribers here too.

I debated if this series was worth writing up because it was so one-sided, but the West got a recap, so we’re going to do one for the East but it’s going to be pretty Carolina slanted with an eye on the Stanley Cup Final starting tonight. There are some things I can dive into with the Habs quality over quantity approach and how much of it was intentional, but I think that’s overblown and is more result-driven than anything. The level of domination was also in another ballpark from anything we’ve seen from this Hurricanes team before, especially this late in the playoffs.

Repeating that against Vegas will be unrealistic, but there are some similarities in how the Knights can implement some of Montreal’s game & execute it better. They have a deeper roster up front and pose more matchup threats. We also saw what they did to Colorado after surviving numerous stretches of play where they got hemmed in. Once they had a lead, they could put the game on lockdown and that is something Carolina will have to adjust to, as they haven’t had to play from behind much this post-season. It’s fair to wonder if the Flyers series would be a better preview because they actually had to rally behind a couple of times against a team that prides themselves on their defensive structure. Again, Vegas is a different monster but let’s look at Carolina’s playoff run as a whole and discuss some x-factors that can lead to them lifting Lord Stanley in a few weeks.

Montreal Series

Can I just say that I despise the narrative that all Carolina does is spam shots? They’ve drifted away from doing this to the extreme degree that they used to and that isn’t why the stats are so lopsided this series. 54% of their shots were scoring chances, compared to only 47% for Montreal. This was flipped in the first three gamesMontreal registering scoring chances on 50% of their shots compared to 47% for Carolina, but once the Canes took control of the series they won both the quantity & quality game.

Montreal’s had to resort to this a few times in their playoff run, converting at an insane rate and against Carolina, it was a lot of 200-feet type of plays where they got by the first wave of the forecheck to get quick-strike opportunities with space. You’re not going to control 100% of every game, so there are going to be pockets where you have a chance to create something & Montreal did what they could to get chances off the rush when Carolina was being too aggressive. Once the Canes put the clamps on that, they didn’t have a Plan B & everything spiraled.

Where things really changed after Game 3 was Carolina running away with the counter-attack game. Through the first three games, the Hurricanes had 5 shots off counter-attacks from the defensive zone and 12 shots off zone exits, compared to 0 and 12 for Montreal respectively. Carolina outshot Montreal in these categories 15-3 over the next two games. The Hall-Stankoven-Blake line went nuts in this series, generating over 16 scoring chances per 60 mintues with a bulk of that coming in the last two games. Also worth mentioning that Montreal kept things reasonably close in a couple of the high-danger pass categories in the first three games (center lane passes and cross-slot passes), but these are such infrequent events that you leave yourself prone to having the pendulum swing in the other direction when you can’t generate any volume or defend.

Going back to the Vegas series, counter-attacks and offense coming from the defensive zone is the one area where they had the edge on Colorado offensively. The Avs are similar to Carolina in the sense that they like playing on the rush & huge part of it stems from how aggressive the yare with forcing turnovers in the neutral zone & reloading off failed zone exits. Vegas took their lumps early in the serires with those, but eventually buckled down and Colorado couldn’t score when the game turned into a cycle-fest. The Hurricanes have showed the ability to score in those situations, but it’s the toughest area to score in the playoffs, as we’ve discussed in previous years.

The biggest area of improvement Carolina’s had this post-season is how they can generate offense from 200 feet away, they still like to flip the puck out of the zone as their main pressure relief, but this team can counter-attack better than they ever could. Preventing it from happening to them has also been key, as they’ve outshot their opponents 24-4 on counter-attacks and 61-44 on shots off defensive zone exits. Compare that to Vegas, who were outshot off the rush in both the Utah & Colorado series, but won the counter-attack shot battle 18-14 and were tied in shots off defensive zone exits 38-38.

This is going to be the breaking point in the series because the neutral zone is Carolina’s main source of rush offense & Vegas will probably give them that as they’ve done to most of their opponents. It’s just a matter of can they win the counter-attack game, something both teams have done an excellent job at this post-season. The versatility in Carolina’s lineup will help them, but it also makes this series tough to predict.

The biggest question for me is going to be the top line and if they can produce at all. Through this entire playoff run, they’ve been underwhelming when it comes to getting on the socresheet while individually having excellent games & succeeding in other areas. The Montreal series was easily their best showing as a unit and they scored a pivotal goal in Game 3 to take control of the series, also leading the team in 5v5 chance production suggesting that something is about to give here. How they were getting that offense is the intersting story because a disproportionate amount of it was off the rush (except for the OT goal oddly enough).

Ehlers has been their most consistent player with his versatility & the Stankoven line has also been a threat in both phases. What’s interesting with them is how they switched it up a little in the Montreal series, sacrificing some rush offense for more sustained zone time with Hall becoming a possession monster. The Aho line, however, was getting all of their offense off the rush with the notable exception being Svechnikov, who has been their best playmaker all post-season without much to show for it. How they were getting this rush offense goes back to what I mentioned earlier about how this club is different offensively than what they used to be.

This breaks down rush offense by game situation, as we know not all shots & scoring chances are created equal. It’s tough to do this with a small sample with so many zeros across the board, but you can see some areas where certian players excel. Ehlers got his looks off neutral zone turnovers & situations where he could slow the game down and regroup. The Stankoven line had a player that excelled in each area, Hall poaching in the neutral zone with Blake/Stankoven thriving when they could exit with possession.

The top line’s offense was heavily tilted from the defensive zone, Jarvis in particular getting plenty of looks when Carolina could break out cleanly or counter-attack. As we’ve talked about in previous years, defensive zone exits are the most reliable way to generate rush offense while counter-attacks are the most risk/reward. Carolina has a top line that can do both. Will they see a reward for it on the scoresheet, though? So far they’ve done enough against some difficult goalies, but this Vegas fortress will be their ultimate test.

I debated if this series was worth writing up because it was so one-sided, but the West got a recap, so we’re going to do one for the East but it’s going to be pretty Carolina slanted with an eye on the Stanley Cup Final starting tonight. There are some things I can dive into with the Habs quality over quantity approach and how much of it was intentional, but I think that’s overblown and is more result-driven than anything. The level of domination was also in another ballpark from anything we’ve seen from this Hurricanes team before, especially this late in the playoffs.

Repeating that against Vegas will be unrealistic, but there are some similarities in how the Knights can implement some of Montreal’s game & execute it better. They have a deeper roster up front and pose more matchup threats. We also saw what they did to Colorado after surviving numerous stretches of play where they got hemmed in. Once they had a lead, they could put the game on lockdown and that is something Carolina will have to adjust to, as they haven’t had to play from behind much this post-season. It’s fair to wonder if the Flyers series would be a better preview because they actually had to rally behind a couple of times against a team that prides themselves on their defensive structure. Again, Vegas is a different monster but let’s look at Carolina’s playoff run as a whole and discuss some x-factors that can lead to them lifting Lord Stanley in a few weeks.

Montreal Series

Can I just say that I despise the narrative that all Carolina does is spam shots? They’ve drifted away from doing this to the extreme degree that they used to and that isn’t why the stats are so lopsided this series. 54% of their shots were scoring chances, compared to only 47% for Montreal. This was flipped in the first three gamesMontreal registering scoring chances on 50% of their shots compared to 47% for Carolina, but once the Canes took control of the series they won both the quantity & quality game.

Montreal’s had to resort to this a few times in their playoff run, converting at an insane rate and against Carolina, it was a lot of 200-feet type of plays where they got by the first wave of the forecheck to get quick-strike opportunities with space. You’re not going to control 100% of every game, so there are going to be pockets where you have a chance to create something & Montreal did what they could to get chances off the rush when Carolina was being too aggressive. Once the Canes put the clamps on that, they didn’t have a Plan B & everything spiraled.

Where things really changed after Game 3 was Carolina running away with the counter-attack game. Through the first three games, the Hurricanes had 5 shots off counter-attacks from the defensive zone and 12 shots off zone exits, compared to 0 and 12 for Montreal respectively. Carolina outshot Montreal in these categories 15-3 over the next two games. The Hall-Stankoven-Blake line went nuts in this series, generating over 16 scoring chances per 60 mintues with a bulk of that coming in the last two games. Also worth mentioning that Montreal kept things reasonably close in a couple of the high-danger pass categories in the first three games (center lane passes and cross-slot passes), but these are such infrequent events that you leave yourself prone to having the pendulum swing in the other direction when you can’t generate any volume or defend.

Going back to the Vegas series, counter-attacks and offense coming from the defensive zone is the one area where they had the edge on Colorado offensively. The Avs are similar to Carolina in the sense that they like playing on the rush & huge part of it stems from how aggressive the yare with forcing turnovers in the neutral zone & reloading off failed zone exits. Vegas took their lumps early in the serires with those, but eventually buckled down and Colorado couldn’t score when the game turned into a cycle-fest. The Hurricanes have showed the ability to score in those situations, but it’s the toughest area to score in the playoffs, as we’ve discussed in previous years.

The biggest area of improvement Carolina’s had this post-season is how they can generate offense from 200 feet away, they still like to flip the puck out of the zone as their main pressure relief, but this team can counter-attack better than they ever could. Preventing it from happening to them has also been key, as they’ve outshot their opponents 24-4 on counter-attacks and 61-44 on shots off defensive zone exits. Compare that to Vegas, who were outshot off the rush in both the Utah & Colorado series, but won the counter-attack shot battle 18-14 and were tied in shots off defensive zone exits 38-38.

This is going to be the breaking point in the series because the neutral zone is Carolina’s main source of rush offense & Vegas will probably give them that as they’ve done to most of their opponents. It’s just a matter of can they win the counter-attack game, something both teams have done an excellent job at this post-season. The versatility in Carolina’s lineup will help them, but it also makes this series tough to predict.

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In the summer of 2010, a network called Bloguin approached me about running a Carolina Hurricanes website. At the time I was entering my junior year of college & spent most of my free time watching hockey & all sports. I lived in Caps territory, but I always had a pulse on the Southeast Division. Not enough to consider myself a fan, but enough to where I felt like it was something I could pull off & not embarrass myself with.

I spent that summer learning as much about the team as I could and was dialed into every single game the next season. Eventually it became a routine for me and the Hurricanes were part of my life for the next 15 years. This in the early stages of what was a decade-long playoff drought for the team, but there were still a lot of us who showed up everyday to talk about the games or doing whatever we could to entertain ourselves & take attention away from how hopeless things looked on the ice at times. Every game felt like it was appointment viewing to me & that reached a new level during the team’s 2018-19 stretch where they finally ended their playoff drought.

Since then, things have settled. I’m in my mid-30’s with a two-year-old at home, so I’m not as invested in every game like I used to. This season was probably the least dialed-in I’ve been to every game, even after the playoffs began. The overtime games against Ottawa and Philadelphia were intense, but I felt like it was business as usual for the Canes & it didn’t have that same tense energy that the stretch in 2019 had. Games 2 & 3 against Montreal is when that spark returned. Those felt like do-or-die situations where every shot had you on the edge of your seat if you’re a Hurricanes fan. They were outplaying the Habs but still trapped in a tie game where one mistake could send the series off the rails. Once Nikolaj Ehlers scored in overtime, it felt like a weight was lifted off the fanbase’s shoulders even if all they did was tie the series. That was the first time I saw PNC Arena have the same level of juice it did in 2019 after Nino Niederreiter scored into an empty net to clinch a playoff spot.

I still talk to some of the same fans who were in my Tweetdeck mentions column every morning in 2012 (shoutout Carolyn, Leah & Tommy). Seeing their posts from Friday night brought back a lot of memories of those early days & how fun those rare wins were. Then there’s the others that I met during the brutal stages of the drought, fans who were at PNC every night and saw Cam Ward skate the puck into his own net or were at the game that got canceled because the ice melted (yes this actually happened). Reaching the playoffs felt like climbing the mountain seven years ago and it didn’t take long for expectations to rise. Getting out of the Conference Final is where the bar has been set the lately and now that they’re here, I’m doing my best to not take it for granted the next week because ask any team with a window how hard it is to make it this far.

As a fanalyst who has tracked the last few SCF’s just from a game coverage standpoint, having a vested interest in it will be weird but I’m excited about it. My Canes fandom is obviously prevelant in my writing but I’ll do my best to not be too in my feelings if there’s a game where things go off the rails.

With all that being said, let’s recap the Western Conference Final and do a deep dive into what Carolina can expect from Vegas on Tuesday.

Western Conference Recap

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