The Carolina Hurricanes have opened the 2023-24 season with a 17-12-4 record. 38 points in 33 games, putting the team on pace for 94 in 82. Ninety-four points gets them the WC1 spot in the East last season. The year before, it has them just missing the playoffs- of course, 2021-22 was an outlier- the gaps between the worst and best teams were massive. That year, the Canes would find themselves 9th in the East, 6 points behind 8th and ten ahead of 10th.

However, 94 points are generally enough for a playoff spot. However, this team has won the metro three straight years and seemingly only improved their roster from last season when they had 113 points. All of this begs the question- what’s going wrong, and is it fixable?

What’s Gone Wrong?

There’s been a few culprits for the Cane’s disappointing start this season. The most glaring of these is their goaltending. The Canes are tied with the New Jersey Devils for the worst SV% in the league, both at .878, but that masks the issue somewhat. Pyotr Kochetkov has gone on an epic hot streak to increase this number, but that doesn’t change the games the goaltending has directly cost Carolina.

October 15th @ Anaheim (6-3 L): Antti Raanta lets in four goals on twenty-three shots for a .826 SV%. If he saves just one more for a .870, this game goes to overtime at 3-3 (The Ducks had two empty-netters)

October 19th @ Seattle (7-4 L): Antti Raanta and Pyotr Kochetkov combine to let in six goals on thirty-five shots. If they bring that .829 up to a .886, the Canes take this one to OT at 4-4.

October 21st @ Colorado (6-4 L): Pyotr Kochetkov gives up six goals on twenty-seven shots. If he can make that four and maintain a .852 SV%, this one finds overtime.

November 30th vs NYI (5-4 OTL): Pyotr Kochetkov gives up five goals on just sixteen shots and four on fourteen regulation shots. If he can make that three on fourteen, an incredible .786, the Canes take this one home.

December 15th vs Nashville (6-5 OTL): Antti Raanta lets in five on twenty-nine in regulation. If he can make that four, the Canes take it home.

Even assuming that all of the games that would go to overtime here end in losses, the Canes would still earn five extra points, putting them second in the Metro and just two points behind the division-leading Rangers. If you give them league-average goaltending, games against Tampa, Calgary, and Vancouver also become contenders for extra points.

So we know that the situation in net has been a problem- but it can’t be the only one. The Canes have lost two of their last three games with Pyotr Kochetkov starting, despite him sporting a .97 GAA and a .957 SV% in those losses. It doesn’t take a hockey genius to realize the reason for failure here- a lack of scoring. In these two games, the Carolina Hurricanes have taken 53 shots and scored on two for a resounding 3.8% success rate. They’ve also attempted to score in the shootout six times, and done so on none of those.

These two games weren’t the only ones where a league average 10% shooting percentage gets the W- this was also the case against Winnipeg on December 4th, when Carolina took a 2-1 L. This league average shooting percentage also gets them to overtime October 21st against Tampa, November 2nd against the Rangers, November 15th against Philadelphia, and December 7th against Calgary.

If you weren’t keeping track, that’s 13 games where the Canes earn at least an extra point with league-average goaltending and shooting. That would put them first in the NHL at 51 points this year, even if they lost every hypothetical overtime game here.

But that’s not a fair measurement. You could take essentially any team in the NHL, and they’d get a massive, massive boost in points with league-average goaltending and shooting EVERY game. But I think this puts into perspective just how many winnable outings have been lost. I’d also like to mention that just like the offense and goaltending, the D has been a massive problem for the Canes this year- but that’s much harder to measure and requires bringing in metrics like expected goals when there have been several games this season where one could simply watch and see that the defense is struggling.

So… What do we do About it?

For goaltending at least, the answer may be nothing. Pyotr Kochetkov has been incredible as of late, with a .949 SV% and a 3-0-2 record over his last five games. If he can keep this up, the Canes have their 1A, and if Andersen actually is back in a month, they have their 1B too.

For the offense and defense, the answer to this question is much more complicated. The Canes have been remarkably inconsistent in both of these areas this season. Whether the answer is a trade, a shuffle, or a management change of some sort is so hard to tell because the team will score a single goal including the shootout the game after putting up six against the at-the-time league leaders, or give up just 1 in regulation and OT the game after letting in six.

In conclusion, the Canes have had a disappointing start to the year, but it’s hard to choose any specific reason. The defense has lost us games, the goaltending has lost us games, and the offense has lost us games, and the lost games just continue to pile up. If we want to win these winnable games, then fixing these issues is a requirement, but due to how inconsistent the team has been from game to game, it’s incredibly difficult to tell how they can be fixed, creating the wonderful 2023-24 Carolina Hurricanes Experience™.