WRAL Sports Fan

Hurricanes

Three is the Canes' magic number

By Mike Maniscalco

Jan 28, 2009

The Hurricanes suffered a tough 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers Tuesday night in the team’s first action after the All-Star Game. With the trade deadline quickly approaching and the schedule dwindling, the Canes need to find more offense. A quick look inside the team’s 23-21-5 record will show the importance of this club scoring three goals a night.

Tuesday, the Canes were 0-4 on the power play against the NHL’s top penalty-killing team, but the Canes' man-advantage unit has been in the bottom third of the league all season long. Carolina has scored just 35 times in 225 chances on the power play and head coach Paul Maurice isn’t breaking down every part of the team’s game when the scoreboard shows the problem.

“One-goal games, if your power play is oh-for, then that is the area you always look at first," Maurice said.

The Hurricanes are not going to turn into an offensive juggernaut overnight, but Maurice feels that goals can be easier to come by in all phases if the power play can work better than 15.6 percent of the time.

“I think if we can get this power play scoring a little bit more, then our 5-on-5 game will relax and you’ll see us score more there, too,” he said.

After a defeat like last night to the Rangers, the head coach knows his team won’t blow many opponents out, so the special teams unit has to click.

“We score two 5-on-5 goals a night, we've got to get our power play going and we should be able to win games," he said.

There are 33 games left on Carolina’s schedule and the Canes are 16-1-2 when scoring three goals or more. Conversely the Canes are 7-20-3 when scoring two goals or fewer. When the Hurricanes have scored more than three goals - which has happened nine times this year - the club is 7-1-1.

But here are the stark numbers. In 49 games this year the Canes have scored three or more only 19 times, so that means 30 games this year the team has scored 2 or less.The Hurricanes have played 11 games in January and have scored three or more goals three times, and that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on goaltender Cam Ward, who has started 14 consecutive games. The Hurricanes need to find any extra offense; if that happens the task of winning 22 of the teams last 33 is possible. 

Carolina has two must win home games with Southeast division opponents Tampa Bay and Atlanta on the schedule before heading out to the West for three tough games. If the Canes win their next two at home and find a way to scratch four points out of the games against Vancouver, San Jose and Phoenix, it should show if the Hurricanes are buyers or sellers with the March 4th trade deadline looming.