Pittsburgh Penguins come into town and make the Carolina Hurricanes look like an AHL team
Warning Carolina Hurricanes fans, only keep reading if you like sad things. Sometimes these graphs can offer us a little consolation. Maybe the Canes lost, but they still played a good game and other things like that. But no not this game. This game was an actual and moral loss for the team and its best for everybody to forget it. But before we send it down the memory hole, let’s take one last look at the graphs and see if there are any lessons to be learned from this disaster of a game. And remember not everything is lost, the Hurricanes still have a game in hand to pull ahead of Philadelphia. Hopefully, they can do that against Columbus tonight.
Team Shots
All data from Hockeystats.ca
Usually prefer using just Shots as a metric to determine which team controlled the play during a game. However, this time Shots on Goal paints a much more accurate picture of what happened in this game: Pittsburgh took control in the second period and didn’t look back. Carolina only mustered 10 total shots on goal in 5v5 play over the 2nd and 3rd period compared to the Penguins 24. That’s just awful for a team wanting to compete for a playoff spot.
Shots Differential
Well ok, one bright point is that there were some players on the Hurricanes last night that decided to come out and play hockey last night. Still, none of them played amazing even if they are on the positive side of things. Interestingly enough, Ron Hainsey leads this chart. Hainsey is having a pretty good year, and even if the Canes are in a playoff spot it would be wise for Ron Francis to listen hard to offers for the veteran defenseman.
Shots and Expected Goal Plots
Normally I would label this into the usual Good, Bad, Dull, Fun quadrants but I figured everybody deserved to be put in the bad area after giving up seven goals last night. I do the same thing in the expected goals graph below.
Still all joking aside, Elias Lindholm and Jordan Staal still played pretty well for the Hurricanes despite the results. I guess that’s one of the few bright spots to take from the past two games that even after the poor game in Columbus, Lindholm and Staal rebounded to play well this game. The Canes will need this attitude of rebounding from bad games if they want to keep the wins coming.
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