Carolina Hurricanes are finally playing to their percentages

Underneath the surface, the Carolina Hurricanes have been one of the better teams in the league. Finally they’re getting the results. 

If you’re a dork like me, the Carolina Hurricanes have been one of your favorite teams. Though barely anyone watches them, they’ve been somewhat on the cutting edge of the NHL for a couple seasons now (the “cutting edge” of the NHL is certainly a nebulous place where a lot of old, drunk guys yell at you). However, lately they’re making everyone notice through their actual results.

The Hurricanes have ripped off a 10-4-1 streak over the past six weeks, which has put them on the shoulders of those in the last wildcard spot and even the Penguins in the third spot in the Metro Division. If you’ve paid any attention, and chances are you haven’t, this is the minimum of what the Hurricanes should have been doing all along.

For the past few years, the Hurricanes have been in the top-five in any analytic at which you look. The Canes always had the lion’s share of attempts and chances. In a world that made sense, they would have been top of their division consistently. But hockey has never made sense. This year, the Canes are the best in Corsi-percentage, measuring how many attempts they get against how many they give up, and best in expected-goals percentage, which measure the quality of chances they get against the ones they give up. Other teams at the top of both categories are ones like San Jose, Nashville, Vegas, and Tampa Bay, all mentioned as candidates to have a parade in June.

Holding the Canes back have been a couple problems. For a good few years now, they’ve had goalies who have performed like they were sinking in a Chuck-E-Cheese ball-pit. Secondly, they haven’t had any premier talent to convert the plethora of chances they were creating, at least beyond the blue line.

And those problems were still around earlier in the year. The triad of Curtis McElhinney, Petr Mrazek, and Scott Darling couldn’t stop bubbles produced by a toddler. No one was scoring.

And then Aho happened.

While the Hurricanes are still third-bottom in shooting-percentage at even-strength, over the past six weeks they’re 10th at 8.6%. If the Canes had maintained their season-long rate of just 6.7%, they’d be 10 goals worse off in this stretch, which is three-to-four points by some formulas.

Most of that is thanks to Aho, who has racked up 21 points in his last 15 games and has begun to thrive after moving to center this year. That also includes 17 goals in his last 28 games, the kind of scoring-rate the Canes just haven’t gotten since Eric Staal was in his pomp.

The Canes dominate possession thanks to a defensive corps that is what more and more teams are going to emulate. Everyone can move, and the top four of Justin Faulk, Dougie Hamilton, Jaccob Slavin, and Brett Pesce are probably the most mobile top-four in the league (though Pesce spends most of his time on the third pairing and Calvin de Haan plays on the top pairings). As the league speeds up, the plodding, construction-horse, atom-smashing d-man is going to go by the wayside. The Canes won’t have to make too many changes.

The Canes might struggle to see this through. Their goaltending hopes rest on McElhinney, who has been the definition of up-and-down. Mrazek hasn’t figured it out, and it’s unlikely the Canes will go out and find someone else (though Detroit’s Jimmy Howard makes a ton of sense). Aho is great, but the Canes are going to have to find consistent scoring from more than his line. Nino Neiderreiter was meant to address that, and is basically the perfect Hurricane: an underrated analytic darling.

Either way, the Canes will have all the nerds cheering them on.