Storm Tracking: Still Relevant

It's Christmas time and the season of giving, but the Carolina Hurricanes didn't want to hand out any easy victories to their competition.  The 4-1 victory over the Leafs stopped their 6 game winning streak began them on a little losing streak.  They then took the Rangers to the shootout, despite not really playing a very good game.  The game in New York was another close affair with both goalies doing everything they could and Carolina's inability to score resulted in another loss.  Against the Devils, Khudobin made some great saves and finally picked up his first win of the season.  While things are still bleak overall and more trades are likely coming, the Canes proved they are not to be taken lightly.  Here are the stats for the week of 12/17/14 through 12/23/14.

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

Chris Terry – Terry is limited in what he provides and most likely wouldn’t be seeing the amount of ice time he is getting if not for injuries, but he is making the most of it.  He had a team leading 2 goals on just 6 shots and got the only shootout goal against the Devils.  Terry is a small guy, but he sure can shoot the puck and score.  He has 6 goals on the season and is shooting just over 21% for the year.  I’m not sure if he really has a place in the everyday lineup, but he seems to be a nice situation player/call-up that can be used in the shootout and probably the PP as well.

Anton Khudobin/Cam Ward – What a week for the Carolina goaltenders!  These 2 split the 4 games and ended up 2^nd in the league this week with a 0.955 save percentage.  Ward stopped the most shots and had the better 5-on-5 save percentage, but Khudobin had the lower goals against average and better overall save percentage.  With the team still struggling to score, the goalies are keeping this team in games.  Who knows how things turn out, but this is one area that doesn’t seem in dire need of repair for Francis.

Andrej Sekera –I really thought Sekera looked more like last year’s version this week than he has most of the season.  He was contributing offensively, skating really well and his defensive game was top notch.  Sekera led the team with 9 blocked shots, tied for the team lead in points and +/- rating and was near the top in many other categories.  His possession numbers weren’t that great, but the whole team wasn’t great there.  I don’t imagine the Canes resigning Sekera, so the better he plays, the more his trade value should increase and the Canes need it sky high.

Weekly Duds

Ron Francis – Francis completed his trade as General Manager and I have to say that I am extremely disappointed.  Trading Jay Harrison is perfectly fine and while I think he is worth more than a pretty much worthless 6^th round pick, I could at least except that since we are getting rid of his salary.  But retaining $450 thousand was a bad decision and limits other potential moves the organization can make.  I hope this is a lessoned learn, because the moves he makes will determine what direction this organization goes in.

Justin Faulk –Overall Faulk had a pretty solid week, scoring a goal and adding 2 assists.  He even managed to register 8 shots on goal and 7 hits while maintaining a positive rating.  But he also had 8 penalty minutes, one penalty in each game.  And they were penalties resulting in him not doing what he needs to do.  This team is weak on the backend and him taking weak penalties puts this team in more difficult situation.  Faulk needs keep moving his feet, keep his stick in right areas and cut down on bad penalties.

Riley Nash – Nash has been one of the nice surprises this season and honestly has been one of the better overall players.  But lately, his game has really taken a step back.  He hasn’t registered a point in his past 6 games and has only had 1 shot on goal in that time period.  Nash is a top 5 scorer on this team and his offensive production is needed even more with Jordan Staal still absent.  While his defensive game hasn’t really suffered during this stretch, the team needs more than that.  Nash doesn’t have to score every game or every other game, but he needs to create chances at a much better rate than what he is doing lately. 

Weekly Team Stats

Former Canes Weekly Stats