As Hurricanes right the ship at the end of 2023, new year offers a chance to start fresh
The turning of the calendar doesn’t mean much in the context of an NHL season, a life and living that functions on a different kind of circadian rhythm. The hockey year begins in September and ends in April for some (if not earlier) and June for the lucky few. The difference between December 31 and January 1 is a paycheck.
The Carolina Hurricanes were back on the ice Monday, their first practice of 2024, after a dramatic win in Toronto on Saturday, but their new beginning is a few weeks behind them anyway.
Since the disastrous trip through Alberta and points west — outscored 15-7 in four losses, rarely competitive and descending into a full-blown goaltending crisis — the Hurricanes are actually 6-1-3 in the past 10 games, a 120-point pace over the course of a full season, heading into Tuesday’s match with the conference-leading New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
It’s the kind of reaction you would hope to see (if not expect) when coach, captain and star all made the kind of public comments always reserved for a full-blown crisis, the successful righting of a listing ship — especially in the case of the red-hot Sebastian Aho: 3-9-12 in the past four games, a prime candidate for the NHL’s first star of the week when that’s announced later Monday, an award the Hurricanes haven’t claimed since 2018.
“I don’t think it was ever a lack of work ethic,” Aho said. “We still worked our tails off every game even though we didn’t do it quite right. And obviously, we were frustrated. When things aren’t going your way, they usually double up.”
It will take a long time for the Hurricanes to shake that experience, the feeling that every shot was going in the net, every mistake will be punished, and every power play is a two-minute exercise in not shooting. (That actually sounds like 2013-18, inclusive, around here.) It was true off and on through most of the first two months of the season, but reached its apex in Western Canada in early December.
While the Hurricanes certainly have other problems, as both Aho and Jordan Staal have pointed out at various times, they pale in comparison to the issues in net. And that continues to be the thread tying all of the Hurricanes’ issues together. For the moment, with Frederik Andersen’s return still some weeks away and Antti Raanta trying to rebuild his confidence, that burden falls entirely on Pyotr Kochetkov.
“Lately, that difference, what’s the difference been? ‘Kooch’ has been good,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “He had the one game in there where you were like, eh, that probably wasn’t where he outplayed the other guy. When he does that, the results are clear. It’s an important position. You don’t want to put it all on the goalie. We don’t need him to be great. I think that’s the whole key, the consistent play.”
There’s actually not much wrong with the Hurricanes that more consistent goaltending won’t fix. They’re fifth in the NHL in terms of expected goals, but 20th in converting those chances into actual goals and 28th in turning unexpected goals into actual goals against, per moneypuck.com. The former is a perennial weakness, a product of the way the Hurricanes play. (If Andrei Svechnikov and Michael Bunting get hot, and both have shown signs lately, that could change quickly.)
They skaters have fixed what they can fix, for the most part. The rest is outside of their control.
“We’ve been better in many areas,” Aho said. “Special teams have been better lately. Five-on-five game has been good. Goalies have been good. All that stuff. You put those together, you have a better chance to win a hockey game, right? It’s not just the one thing, or some magic that somebody said in the locker room. In a way, it’s good to have some adversity along the way. You see how much guys care here. You can learn from that.”
Or, as Brady Skjei put it, better December than April.
“You can grow together as a team through that kind of stuff, and I think we did a good job of that,” Skjei said. “Obviously, that was a pretty low point. The team hasn’t really gone through that the last few years.”
Either way, it doesn’t take the new year to give the Hurricanes a fresh start. They’ve already gotten one, unmoored from the calendar, but entirely of their own making.
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This story was originally published January 1, 2024 at 12:42 PM with the headline "As Hurricanes right the ship at the end of 2023, new year offers a chance to start fresh."
