Should we expect anything different from the Hurricanes this postseason?

After a solid showing in Game 1, the Carolina Hurricanes found themselves on the losing end of Game 2 to the Washington Capitals, with many of the same problems offensively coming up for them for the past several years. Their top players struggled to generate offense, and their power play just hasn’t done anything in the series so far.

Should we expect the Canes to change at all based on what we’ve seen? Luke DeCock from the Raleigh News & Observer joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about Carolina’s performance thus far in the playoffs and what the expectations are.

Luke DeCock: Obviously this is a team where, when you look at their regular season numbers and even the numbers in the playoffs, it’s an analytics darling. It’s one of the teams that, if you’re looking straight at possession numbers and expected goals, things like that, this is a team that has a, whatever your chosen analytics purveyor is, a 1-in-6 to 1-in-5 to 1-in-4 chance of winning the Stanley Cup right now, and goes into every season as one of the favorites in that category.

But still, six years in, now six and a quarter, they haven’t won a Conference Finals game, they’re 0-8 in the Conference Finals. Obviously the first year in 2019, they were happy to be there, and the Boston Bruins were an absolute wagon. But the Florida Panthers‘ series in 2023 was a huge missed opportunity. The Hurricanes had home ice, they lost four one-goal games, two in overtime, one in four overtimes.

So two questions. One, can this team score goals when it needs to in the playoffs against playoff-level defense at 5-on-5 and on the power play. The power play’s been at the top of the list on every post-mortem for the last six years. And number two is, is the goaltending good enough to hold up over 16 wins? Can the goaltending win 16 games?

And to me, that’s been more of a durability question at times. Obviously, the first couple of years, it was Petr Mrazek. Alex Nedeljkovic wasn’t very good in 2021. And then now, you’re in the Frederik Andersen era. And he was either hurt or banged up or worn down in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Now you’ve got a healthy, confident, surgically repaired Frederik Andersen. So I think that the dynamic has changed on that front. The Hurricanes are a different team when they’re getting the kind of goaltending that they’ve gotten from Frederik Andersen in these playoffs.

Now, can they score enough goals to make that count? They did not in Game 2. They did in Game 1. They certainly did against the New Jersey Devils. Obviously, the trade for Mikko Rantanen was an attempt to address that. And it just didn’t work, right? He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t fit the way they played. He just doesn’t play at this pace, which is not a criticism, it’s just an acknowledgement of the way that his style fits better with the Dallas Stars. They made the best of it that they could, Logan Stankoven obviously does fit the way they play, but he’s not Mikko Rantanen, and we’ve seen that the way Rantanen has played in these playoffs. So there certainly was a recognition or acknowledgement of their goal-scoring. That was an attempt to address it. It didn’t work out, they made the best of it, they moved on.

So they need Andrei Svechnikov to play the way he did against the Devils. He has not always played that way in the playoffs. They need Sebastian Aho to be a number one center. They need the third and fourth lines to chip in with goals. And they can.

One of the reasons I think the Hurricanes weren’t as good in Game 2 as they were in Game 1 is Mark Jankowski came out of the lineup injured. That guy was a bull against the Devils when he got into that series, and in Game 1, that made their fourth line so much more effective. It’s tougher with Jack Roslovic on the road because you can’t pick his spots. Jankowski, you can throw out in any scenario, he’s going to be fine. So I think you’ll notice that less at home in Game 3, where they can pick spots for Roslovic. But I think that hurt them in Game 2.

So to your question, it’s all a holistic thing. Can you score enough goals? Can you stop the other team from scoring enough goals? But there are very specific reasons for the Hurricanes as to why those questions exist. I think one of them has so far been answered. I think if Frederik Anderson plays like this, the Hurricanes are a good enough team to play for the Stanley Cup. But they got to score goals, and they got to get the power play back to where it was in the Devils series.

You can watch the full episode here…