We Have Reached Peak Carolina. Now What?
By Trey Elder Aug 17, 2024
Since 2018, the Carolina Hurricanes have been an outstanding regular season team, collecting the third-most standings points, but have very little to show for it in the playoffs, only reaching the conference finals twice and getting swept both times. The explanation I have heard from a lot of the media is that Carolina’s style of play, while effective in the regular season, doesn’t work in the playoffs, with the main reason being their goal-scoring, which allegedly “disappears” when the games matter the most. As a hockey fan who has watched a lot of Carolina games over the past few years, I didn’t think the answer was that simple. I wanted to investigate whether or not Carolina’s style of play in the regular season translates to the playoffs and if it does, then what has really been causing them to consistently come up short in the postseason.
The Hurricanes have a simple, yet effective approach to hockey: outwork the opponent and get pucks to the net. As many as they can, from just about anywhere. The hope is that by peppering the goaltender with as many shots as possible, they can, like their team mantra says, cause chaos, and create more scoring chances, leading to more goals.
This idea has been the central dogma that Carolina has lived and breathed ever since Rod Brind’Amour took over as head coach in 2018, and the data backs it up. From the start of the 2018-2019 regular season until now, at even strength they have been first in Corsi, Fenwick, and shot attempts, as well as second in shots on goal. They control the game through puck possession and dominating the shot count. Their strategy of throwing anything and everything at the net is evidenced by their extremely high rankings for low danger unblocked shot attempts at 5 on 5 (including number one in each of the past two seasons) and missed shot attempts (including number one in each of the past three seasons). And their mission to “cause chaos” is accomplished by generating the most rebounds in the league in four of the previous six seasons. The execution of their strategy is definitely there; the weird thing is, the goals aren’t.
On average, the Hurricanes have scored 2.09 even strength goals per game over the course of the last six seasons, which ranks 12th in the league. That's good, but it doesn’t align with the elite ranks the Canes have when it comes to generating shots. To investigate this discrepancy, I created scatterplots for four different types of shots (rebounds, low danger, medium danger, high danger), with the x-axis being the league-wide rank of a team’s attempts per game and the y-axis being the league-wide rank of a team’s goal conversion rate-the percentage of the shots attempted that result in a goal. I did this for every team in the league for each of the last six seasons starting in 2018-2019, meaning that each team will have six data points on each of the four scatterplots, so every team has 24 observations in total.
I divided each plot into quadrants with the initial assumption that because Carolina’s scoring seemed much lower than it should be given their abundance of shot attempts, the majority of their seasons would fall into the upper left quadrant. This would mean that during the regular season they attempted an above-average amount of shots but had a below-average goal conversion rate.
Regular Season Ranks Since 2018-2019
My assumption was correct, but how correct was surprising. Across the four plots, 21 out of Carolina’s 24 observations appeared in the “lots of chances, terrible finishing” quadrant, an astonishing display of goal-scoring inefficiency. The team with the second-most seasons in the top left is the Ottawa Senators with 14 out of 24, which is 33% less than the Canes. Carolina is the only team to have zero seasons with a below-average ranking in attempts (right half of the plot) for all four shot types, but they also find themselves tied with the Senators for the most total seasons with a below average goal conversion rate (top half of the plot). To put it another way, since 2018, the Hurricanes’ finishing ability has been worse than every team in the league except the Sens, who have missed the playoffs in each of the past six seasons. Carolina, meanwhile, has made the playoffs in six consecutive seasons despite their finishing futility, mainly due to their incredible 5 on 5 defense. Combining the last six seasons, they have only allowed 1.75 even strength goals per game, second only to Boston, creating a sizable goal differential (+0.34 goals/game) that allows them to consistently win games despite being middle of the pack at 5 on 5 scoring.
The odd part about the Canes’ finishing ability is that if we remake these four scatterplots using data from the last six postseasons, they look totally different. Instead of 21 of 24 observations showing up in the dreaded top-left quadrant, the “Postseason Ranks” graph shows that Carolina only has 7 out of their 24 playoff observations in the top-left, a marked improvement over the regular season. And in the playoffs, Carolina only has 14 of 24 observations with below-average finishing, much better than the 21 of 24 they had in the regular season. These postseason data points imply that in the last six playoffs the Hurricanes’ finishing ability, compared to the rest of the playoff teams, has been about league-average, a major step up from their pitiful regular season rankings. But even though Carolina’s finishing is much improved in the postseason compared to the regular season, their shoot-first style of play has remained consistent across both.
Postseason Ranks Since 2018-2019
Carolina does score slightly less 5 on 5 goals per game in the playoffs than in the regular season (1.95 versus 2.09) but they also allow less goals per game (1.65 versus 1.75), making their per game goal differentials approximately equal. This means that even though they are scoring less goals in the playoffs, the notion that their scoring “dries up” or the goals are “disappearing” come the postseason isn’t exactly true, because relative to how many goals they are allowing, it remains the same. They still average the same amount of shots on net per game, 26, but they attempt almost 3 more shots, including 2 more low danger unblocked shots per game, showing that they try even harder to get anything and everything to the net. And they still tend to control the flow of the game, with Corsi and Fenwick per game values of 0.54. Both of these are slightly lower than in the regular season (0.56 each), but it’s understandable given the increased quality of competition the postseason brings. And despite the Canes’ goaltending being a bit of a revolving door during the Brind’Amour era, in which they have had an NHL-leading 7 different goaltenders start a playoff game, their regular and postseason save percentages since 2018 are the exact same at 0.906.
Despite Carolina’s unorthodox combination of high-volume shooting, terrible finishing, and outstanding defense, they are able to consistently win games in the regular season, playing their way. So, if in the playoffs, the Canes play essentially the same style of hockey at even strength, get the same goaltending, with a near identical per game goal differential and even better finishing, why aren’t they winning? Why has their formula, which has been so successful in the regular season, failed to win them even one conference finals game? The answer is special teams.
Carolina routinely leans on their special teams during the regular season and for good reason; in the last six seasons, they have been elite. Their power play is usually above average and occasionally great, and their penalty kill has been consistently outstanding, ranking 8th, 4th, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, and 1st the past six years. But during the entirety of the Brind’Amour era, the Hurricanes’ special teams have been their undoing in the postseason. On average, their power play drops by 7% and their penalty kill by 8% in the playoffs, and there has not been a single year where their power play or penalty kill has been better in the postseason than in the regular season.
| Season | Regular Season PP% | Postseason PP% | Regular Season PK% | Postseason PK% | Regular Season PPG For/Game | Postseason PPG For/Game | Regular Season PPG Against/Game | Postseason PPG Against/Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 17.8 | 9.6 | 81.6 | 68.6 | 0.488 | 0.333 | 0.512 | 1.07 |
| 2019 | 22.3 | 13.8 | 84.0 | 81.8 | 0.632 | 0.500 | 0.529 | 0.625 |
| 2020 | 25.6 | 18.2 | 85.2 | 76.2 | 0.714 | 0.545 | 0.393 | 0.727 |
| 2021 | 22.0 | 13.0 | 88.0 | 74.0 | 0.573 | 0.429 | 0.354 | 0.786 |
| 2022 | 19.8 | 17.6 | 84.4 | 84.1 | 0.524 | 0.533 | 0.439 | 0.467 |
| 2023 | 26.9 | 19.4 | 86.4 | 73.3 | 0.744 | 0.636 | 0.427 | 0.727 |
| Average | 22.4 | 15.3 | 84.9 | 76.3 | 0.613 | 0.496 | 0.442 | 0.734 |
And although it is possible for the smaller sample size of the postseason to distort these percentages, this is not the case. Even when controlling for the smaller number of games played in a playoff run by looking at power play goals scored and allowed by the Canes on a per-game basis, the results are still just as dismal. In each of the last six years Carolina has allowed more power play goals per game in the playoffs than the regular season, and they have scored less power play goals in the playoffs than the regular season in five of the last six years. The only postseason in which they scored more was 2022-2023, when they scored 0.09 more goals per game, a practically insignificant improvement.
The reason this is especially relevant now is that I believe that the 2023-2024 season was “Peak Carolina,” where the Canes pushed their play style philosophy to the absolute limit. They were first in Corsi, Fenwick, shot attempts, missed shots attempts, and low danger unblocked shot attempts in both the regular season and the playoffs. They were also second in shots on goal and third in rebounds in the regular season and, in typical Carolina fashion, 16th in goals with 2.06 5 on 5 goals per game. But it didn’t matter as they only allowed 1.78 even strength goals per game and finished third in the league in points. They even made an uncharacteristically big splash at the deadline by adding Jake Guentzel and opted not to trade multiple high-profile pending UFAs. They were officially all-in.
In the playoffs, their play at even strength was arguably even more “Carolina-esque” than the regular season. Their 38 low danger unblocked shot attempts per game were 8 more than any other team. They were already attempting nearly 58 shots per game in the regular season, which was the most by any team since 2008. In the playoffs they increased it to 66 attempts per game, the second most by any playoff team in the last sixteen years. And yet, their bid for a Stanley Cup fell woefully short as they continued to be plagued by the same familiar problems.
Their power play dropped from 26.9%, which was second in the entire NHL, to 19.4%, which would have ranked 21st in the regular season, and their penalty kill fell from 86.4%, which was first in the league, to 73.3%, which in the regular season would have been 30th out of 32 teams. And to make matters even worse, their goaltending, which had sported an above-average .905 save percentage, sunk to .894, tied for the worst of any team to win a playoff round.
It’s not that the Hurricanes can’t win a Stanley Cup by playing the style they do, it’s just that they haven’t. The combination of the 2023-2024 regular and postseasons was the Hurricanes’ best execution of their strategy since its inception and they didn’t even make the conference finals, which begs the question of whether or not the team needs to consider making some major changes. Despite their recent playoff failures I believe in the Hurricanes’ approach to hockey because I believe in the logic that drives it. More shots equals more chances equals more goals. And over the course of the last six years, they’ve proven that they can win by playing their game. But they’ve also proven that they need elite special teams in order to do so, which for whatever reason they haven’t been able to produce in the playoffs.
I think that going forward, the Canes need to prioritize players who will give them depth on special teams. Signing both Shayne Gostisbehere and William Carrier this offseason could be their attempt at doing so. It is worth noting that the only year in which Carolina scored more power play goals per game in the postseason than the regular season (that practically insignificant improvement) was 2022-2023, which was the year Carolina traded for Gostisbehere at the deadline and had him quarterback their second power play unit. And Carrier is a very capable penalty killer who has tons of playoff experience from his tenure with the Vegas Golden Knights.
However, it is possible that the Hurricanes move towards a different style of play given the massive changes their roster underwent this offseason. Maybe the losses of Brady Skjei and Brett Pesce will weaken their 5 on 5 defense to the point where they need to start scoring more even strength goals to make up for it. Maybe as they introduce a new wave of young prospects like Bradley Nadeau and Jackson Blake into the lineup, they’ll switch to a style of offense that emphasizes shot quality over pure quantity. Or maybe they’ll stay the course with their unique play style, trusting that the postseason results will eventually come. Whatever they do, it will be fascinating, and other than my hometown Washington Capitals, the Carolina Hurricanes are the team I am most excited to watch this upcoming season.