Storm Tracking: Saying Goodbye

The Carolina Hurricanes had a pretty solid week, going 2-1-0 against 3 Eastern Conference teams.  They took care of business against the Leafs, displaying an excellent penalty kill.  They didn't allow 1 shot on goal in 4 Leaf PP opportunities.  They then traveled to Newark and while they weren't horrible, the Devils capitalized on early mistakes and held on rather easily.  The Canes came back to a icy Raleigh to play a team that might actually be fighting for a playoff spot, but you wouldn't know that by watching the game.  Except for a small 5 minute stretch, Carolina more or less dominated the Flyers and came away with the 4-1 victory.  The whole team played a part for a victory in Cam Ward's 500th career NHL game.  Now on to the stats for the week of 2/18/15 through 2/24/15.

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

Cam Ward – Ward played in his 499^th & 500^th game this week, which is quite an accomplishment in itself.  Not only did he win both games, he only allowed 1 goal in each game he played.  His 0.958 save percentage would rank 3^rd among all teams this week.  While things did get off to a rough start for Cam this year, he has really rebounded nicely.  He currently sits 25^th in wins, 12 in goals against average and tied 21^st in save percentage among all qualified goalies this season.  The Canes have a lot of money tied up in their goaltenders and they have some holes to fill, so Francis has an interesting situation on his hands heading down the stretch and into the offseason.

Eric Staal – Eric had a nice week, after only 1 point in his 4 previous games, he collect 3 in the 3 games this week.  He tied for the team lead in points and shots on goal and also went 7 for 10 in the faceoff circle.  Eric hasn’t been taking a lot of draws lately, but he was pretty success when doing so.  Since moving to wing, he has seemed to get back to putting the puck toward the net and I believe that is when Eric is at his best.  Since Jordan returned to the lineup, Eric has increased his shots per game from 3.00 to 3.33.  The last time his shots per game averages were that high, it was the 10/11 season and Eric had 33 goals.  Maybe this can continue into next season and we can see an improved Eric Staal?

Alexander Semin – Semin has had a bad year and has taken a lot of deserved flak.  But this week, we got to see a little bit of Alexander Semin that we’ve missed most of the year.  Semin led the team with 3 assists, tied for the team lead in points, had very good possession numbers and tied for 3^rd on the team with 9 shots on goal.  This is the Alex that we need to see more of and this should be a somewhat standard week for him.  Will this continue, I’m not sure, but Semin does have 6 points in his last 8 games, so maybe he’s starting to find out where he fits in Peters system?

Weekly Duds

Anton Khudobin – Khudobin only played in the 1 away game and even though you could point to reasons for the 3 goals on 19 shots, he has been struggling.  In Dobby’s last 4 games, he has given up 16 goals on 102 shots.  That’s only a 0.814 save percentage and that isn’t going to earn you many starts.  He was performing quite well until the St. Louis game at the end of January and since then the trains have come off the track.  I’m not sure if he just fighting a nagging injury that’s effecting his game or the Blues destroyed his confidence, but he’s an expensive backup and should be playing much better than he has recently.

Elias Lindholm – I’m not really sure what is going on with Elias.  He’s still producing points at about his normal clip, he’s getting PP time and even got put with the Staal brothers against the Flyers.  But his game is off and his 5 on 5 possession numbers were the worst on the team this week, by a considerable margin.  This kid might just be suffering through a slump, but he is expected to be one of the core members to build around.  Lindholm just doesn’t seem to be progressing as we need him to progress and it is some cause of concern.  Like I said last week, we all see the skill, but we need to see it more consistently and we really need to see him start taking that next step.

Victor Rask – Like Lindholm, Rask seems to have fallen into a funk as of late.  The rookie has looked really good this season, better than many expected, but he has struggled as of late.  He had some rough games in mid-February and was sat for 2 games, in hopes that he could take things in and get back on track.  But that really hasn’t happened yet with 0 points and a -2 rating since returning to the lineup.  His faceoff ability has also dropped into the low 40s.  Maybe it’s just a slump or lost confidence, or maybe he’s hit the rookie wall.  All I know is that he’s only been a plus player once in the past month and something needs to happen to get his game going back in the right direction.

Weekly Team Stats

Former Canes Weekly Stats