Storm Tracking: Storm Weakened, but Winds still Swirling

The week didn't go all that well for the Hurricanes or their offense, but at least it ended with something they could build on. Carolina entered the week on a 3 game losing streak and had a home game against a team they seem to struggle against. They lost to the Lightning and were held scoreless for the first time this season. They then traveled to Madison Square Garden to get run out of the building by the Rangers by a 5 to 1 score. Things were looking very bleak for the Canes as they headed back home to face Flyers. But the team played a solid game, albeit ugly, and when Eric Staal found Jordan Staal in front of the net with a minute left, the Canes found a glimmer. Then Manny Malhotra got a breakaway in OT and put it past Steve Mason for Carolina first non-shootout OT win since February 7th. Now the Canes need to take this positive mojo and translate it into some wins during the rest of their home stand. Here are the stats for the week of 10/30/13 through 11/5/13.

Canes Weekly Stats

Weekly Advanced Stats

Here is a little key to some of my abbriviations. F - For, A - Against, CF% - Corsi For Percentage, FF% - Fenwick For Percentage, SF% - Shots For Percentage, OZst% - Offensive Zone Start Percentage, NZst% - Neutral Zone Start Percentage and DZst% - Defensive Zone Start Percentage. If you would like more advanced statistics, this information was collected from www.extraskater.com.

Who's Hot

• Manny Malhotra - No one was sure Malhotra could fully return from an eye injury he suffered a couple of years ago. No NHL team offered him a contract, but the Checkers took a chance and the Hurricanes followed with a two-way deal this past week. Manny came in and provided the Canes with something they were lacking, a great faceoff man, and man he is good! Malhotra was 39 of 56 on the draw, good for 69.6%, which is tops in the NHL for anybody with over 50 faceoffs. As the week moved along, he gradually got more and more time. Then in OT, he took a pass from Ron Hainsey and gave Carolina their first win in 6 games. Manny was 1 of only 2 Canes players to end the week with a plus rating. And all of his possession numbers were above 50%, which is particularly impressive given that 67% of his starts were in the defensive zone. He still has some work to do, but maybe Manny is one of those diamonds in the rough Jim Rutherford finds every once in a while?
• Ryan Murphy - Honestly, it was difficult trying to determine which Canes players had the best week, but my eye test told me Murphy did pretty well. Despite not registering a point in any game, the rookies confidence and game continue to grow. While he is still an "offensive defenseman,", Muller seems to be trusting him more in every situation. The part of the game that sets him apart from everyone else is his skating and he has been pretty good at bringing the puck into the zone for the Canes. He does need to do a better job of holding onto the puck and game-to-game & shift-to-shift consistency isn't quite there, but he is only a rookie. If he continues progressing as he is and puts some more muscle on that small frame, the sky is the limit for this kid.
• Justin Peters - This is tough, but I thought I should give Peters some credit for what he's done. He hasn't been great, but he is the 3rd string goalie, really not even a NHL caliber guy. But he was good against the Flyers and had over 0.900 save percentage and below a 3.00 GAA for the week. He might not have really won any games for the Canes, but it certainly wasn't his fault the Canes lost any. Peters is in a very tough situation and he is probably doing the best he can with it. If he maybe got a little goal support, then maybe his record would be better than it is. He almost definitely won't be with the team a month from now, but if Peters can play similar to how he played against Philadelphia, he will at least give this team a chance, as long as they score some goals.

Who's Not

• Justin Faulk/Andrej Sekera pairing - Not a very good week for Carolina's top pairing. I understand they play a lot of tough minutes against real good competition, but they have seemed off the past couple of games. The Canes allowed 9 goals this week, the Faulk/Sekera pairing was on the ice for 7 of those. Sekera ended up -5 for the week, but did score the lone goal against the Rangers. Faulk was a -4 with an assist, but didn't even register a shot on goal in the three games. This team needs these guys to be on top of their game almost every night and that was something that didn't happen this week. Hopefully they will get back to being the pairing they were at the beginning of the season, if not, it's going to be a long season.
• Tuomo Ruutu - I have to start out by saying that I thought the Philadelphia game was Ruutu's best of the season. He had 8 hits on the night and was over 50% possession, in every situation, for the first time since I started checking those stats. But for the week, Ruutu play continues to drag behind an already slumping team. He went without a point and was a team worst -4 among forwards. His All Situations Corsi For Percentage is among the lowest on the team and he continues to take questionable penalties. Ruutu is a very important piece of this team, but he needs to do more than just lay hits. He needs to be a threat to score, he needs to be defensively responsible, he needs to be in front of the net. It's going to take some time to knock the rust off and hopefully this Flyers game is him turning the corner, because the Canes need him to be better.
• The Offense - I couldn't nail this down to one particular player, because this issue is effecting the whole team. The Canes scored 3 goals this week! The funny/sad thing is that Columbus too only scored 3 goals and New Jersey & Philadelphia scored less than 3 goals for the week. The Metro Division had some offensively inept teams. But Carolina is built to score goals and with your top 2 goaltenders down, you need to put more pucks in the back of the net. I'm not sure if this is players gripping their sticks too tightly, a system that doesn't work for the players or just a slump of some sort. But somebody needs to figure it out and get it corrected. I did want to mention that the NHL had 9 shutouts out of 42 games this week. That's 21% of the games had 1 team not score a single goal. Only 10% of the other 183 games played this season have had a team shutout, so some offensive bug must be going around the league.

Notable Weekly Team Stats

• As mentioned, the Canes goal production was rather weak. 1.00 goals per game ranked tied for 27th in the league. Their 3.00 goals against per game was good for a tie for 17th in the NHL.
• Carolina's PP was only successful 9.1% of the time, tied with St. Louis for 18th for the week. The PK wasn't much better, ranking tied at 20th with a 81.8% kill rate. If the Hurricanes are going to to successful, Muller needs to have the special teams achieving higher rates.
• The Hurricanes were 8th in the NHL this week in shots per game at 32.3, but still allowed more than they took. Their 33.0 shots against per game were 6th highest in the league.
• For the week, Carolina ranked 1st in the NHL in takeaways (39), 8th in blocked shots (53) and tied for 9th with Florida in hits (74). They were 23rd with Detroit & Washington in giveaways (27).
• Team Stat of the Week - Faceoff % - 58.5% - What a change for the Hurricanes! Going from 44.5%, 25th in the league to 58.5% and 2nd, just behind Minnesota. Malhotra really helped, but Riley Nash was also 63.2%, Eric Staal was 56.5%and Jordan Staal was 52.4%.

Former Canes Weekly Stats