Storm Tracking: One!

Sorry I've been away for a while, I had a family matter to deal with, but I'm back now.  I see not much has changed for our beloved Hurricanes.  They continue to lose and do so in such a non-entertaining way.  The team simply doesn't appear to have enough skill and doesn't seem to be competing hard enough to win games in the NHL.  This team is in a very sad state and needs a enema (sorry if that is offensive to anybody).  I believe that EVERYBODY now can see the writing on the wall, but does that mean management will finally start breaking things down for the inevitable rebuild?  I guess time will tell, but on to the weekly stats.  Here are the stats for the week of 12/10/14 through 12/16/14.

Canes Weekly Stats

Weekly Advanced Stats

The chart is arranged by the highest 5 on 5 Close Corsi For Percentage.

Here is a little key to some of my abbreviations. AS – All Situations, 5C – 5 on 5 Close, 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.war-on-ice.com.

Weekly Studs

Jeff Skinner – Picking studs this week is like finding the prettiest girl in a bar full of ugly women.  But Skinner was decent this week.  He ended up tied for the team lead in goals and points.  He also led the team in takeaways with 3 and had really nice possession numbers.  I think we would all still like to see him do more, but at least he’s not invisible.  It looks like this is become more of Skinner & Faulk’s team and they need to do what they can to lead by example.

Nathan Gerbe – Here’s a case when stats don’t really tell the whole story.  Gerbe had no goals or assists and was pretty much average in the possession area on the team.  But of everybody on the ice, he consistently showed the most heart and effort.  Grebe did lead the team with 12 shots and goal and had an Even rating on a team that was outscored by 8.  If everybody else could put forth the same compete level that Gerbe does, this team would be quite different.

Justin Faulk – I’m not really sure anybody deserves this last spot, but I’ll give it to Faulk.  He did score 1 of the Canes 3 goals this week and ended up a +1.  He tied for 1st on the team with 6 hits and was 2^nd with 9 shots on goal.  Whether he can be the Canes #1 defender is still in question, but he has many of the tools, Peters just has to refine some issues and get everything put together.  Like I mentioned above, this looks like it is becoming Skinner & Faulk’s team and they need to play like it for the rest of the season.

Weekly Duds

The Offense – I know the team is suffering with some injuries and it isn’t the most skilled team in the league, but 6 straight games of only scoring 1 goal?  Our defense isn’t good, but there were winnable games in this stretch, we just can’t put the puck in the back of the net.  Everything we do offensively just looks like a struggle.  This is on the players, because they should know how to score by now and it’s somewhat on the coaching staff.  You just can’t win a lot of games by only scoring 1 goal and it’s not helping with attendance, because scoring is exciting.  This rut needs to be addressed and rather quickly.

Chris Terry – It’s tough picking on Terry, because he is what he is and does put forth effort.  He started the season rather well with 5 points in the first 5 games.  But since then he has 2 points and both were in the same game and that occurred on November 2^nd.  Terry isn’t getting a tremendous amount of opportunities, but he is getting some and isn’t really doing anything with them.  His -4 rating was the worst among the forward ranks and he just doesn’t provide a lot of other things.  Francis gave him a $600K NHL salary and a $300K AHL salary and that’s a lot of money for what appears to be an AHL player.

Anton Khudobin – What a difference a year makes.  Dobby was suppose to be our primary goaltender and looked awesome last season.  But he is not looking the same this year and that could be a result of very limited starts.  The coaching staff has loaded up on Cam (surprising isn’t it?) and Dobby hasn’t been able to get in any sort of groove.  When he does get to play, he really looks like he is fighting the puck and the Flyers game was pretty damn bad.  His teammates aren’t helping him either, but you have to wonder if he’s regretting signing that contract extension with Carolina.

Weekly Team Stats

Former Canes Weekly Stats