Storm Tracking: Meat & Potatoes

Carolina finished up their most successful month of the season with back-to-back loses to 2 very good teams.  They fought back against the Blues to get the game to a shootout and earned a point that probably shouldn't have happened.  The next night in New York, the Canes did fare well against the Rangers.  The 4-1 lose probably looks worse than the game actually was, but the Hurricanes never really had a good shot at that game.  Then the team embarked on a western conference trip, starting with the Ducks.  The team was dominated early on, but the score did not reflect that.  Eventually both teams broke through and Carolina jumped out on top.  But Anaheim is good and they sent the game to OT, where they won it rather quickly.  An 0-1-2 week is nothing to write home about, but these were 3 of the better teams in the NHL.  Now on to the stats for the week of 1/28/15 through 2/3/15.

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

Brad Malone – You’ve got to give it to Malone, he went the first 3 months of the season without a point and since 2015 hit, he has 8 points in 12 games.  He led the team with 2 goals & 3 points this week and has recently been one of the more consistent Canes while only receiving minimal ice time.  The 4^th line as a whole has been much improved and if not for the play of the Staals, they would be getting even more pub.  Last night was a real example of what Malone can do when he is on his game.  His speed led to a penalty shot and a PP.  He is always a weekly leader in hits and is pretty good in the dot when he takes faceoffs.  It is likely that McClement will get trading within the next month and Malone will have his role increase.  The way he is playing right now, he should probably get a few more minutes either way.

Justin Faulk – Speaking of minutes, no Canes is playing more this season than Justin Faulk.  The Canes All-Star is continuing to carry a heavy load and deliver a heavy shot.  He only had the 1 point (a PP goal) this week, but he’s 2^nd on the team in scoring and is tied for the team lead in shots with 139.  Faulk and Eric were also the only Canes players this week to finish 50% or higher in the 4 possession categories I cover.  For the week, Faulk tied for 2^nd in shots on goal, 2^nd in hits, 1^st in takeaways and had 0 giveaways.  Carolina is asking the 22 year old to shoulder a lot and there is still room for improvement in his own zone, but Faulk is justifying his new contract, only if many other Canes would do the same thing.

Ryan Murphy – I am not a big fan of Ryan Murphy, I think he is too small for this team, he’s not really a top 4 defenseman and I would gladly trade him for a bigger, less offensive blueliner.  But going against some real Stanley Cup contending teams this week, Murphy more or less held his own, averaging over 20 minutes a night.  He tied for 2^nd on the team with 2 points, led the team with 11 shots and tied for 1^st with 7 blocked shots.  His +/- wasn’t good and his possession numbers were below average on the team, but you can see the undersized young player has a little something.  I still believe he’s really just a 3^rd pairing/PP specialist, but paired with the right guy, he is capable of playing 18 to 20 minutes.

Weekly Duds

Anton Khudobin – Dobby went from playing lights out to getting knocked out.  Everybody has a bad day, so 2 goals on 3 shots against St. Louis can happen, they weren’t entirely his fault either.  But then giving up 5 goals against Anaheim doesn’t exactly bring back confidence.  A 0.794 save percentage and 6.55 goals against average is just plain horrible and he must be better.  If Ron Francis had a potential deal for Cam Ward on the horizon, the way Khudobin has played his past 2 outings might make Francis rethink giving him the keys.  Dobby needs to focus, limit rebound opportunities and get back to playing the way we know he can.  Until that, there are questions and in the NHL, you don’t want to have a question in between the pipes.

Nathan Gerbe – I always find it tough to put Gerbe on this list, because he works so hard every night.  But when it’s deserved, he belongs here.  Gerbe has had a difficult year and not scoring in a week isn’t all that uncommon for him.  But the team worse -6, that just inexcusable.  Gerbe has never had such a bad 3 game rating in his NHL career.  He was also quite poor in the possession categories, ranking 4^th worst & 2^nd worst in the 5-on-5 Close situations.  I’m really not sure what is going on with Gerbe this year, but consistency is eluding him and I know he can play much better.  Let’s just hope that he gets things straightened out and get back to be the responsible player he normally is.

Jeff Skinner – I sure hope someone has a milk carton in the works for the missing 22 year old.  Skinner again finds himself on the DUD list, but you have to do something positive to get yourself off.  Skinner has more or less been invisible in the offensive zone and poor in the defensive zone.  He had the 2^nd worst +/- on the team this week, tied for team high 4 penalty minutes, had 0 points and did have a possession category over 47.4%.  But I guess on a positive note, he was 60% in the circle.  The highly talented forward is now at a career worst 8 game scoreless streak, surpassing his 7 game scoreless streak from late December/early January.  Let me put it another way, Skinner has 3 points in his last 17 games.  This same guy has 18 goals in a 19 game span last year.  What has happened to him, is the majority of this on Peters system?

Weekly Team Stats

Former Canes Weekly Stats