Carolina scored everything but goals in the conference final series that ended, and this is an unfortunately familiar story from recent years, writes Urheilu’s NHL reporter Tommi Seppälä.
Tommi Seppälä Urheilu’s NHL reporter
The craziest stories in team sports can never be written in advance. As recently as April 1st, just a few rounds before the end of the regular season, Florida’s playoff spot was not even in its own hands.
Just a few days earlier, it had lost to Philadelphia, Toronto, the Rangers and Ottawa – that is, four games in a row.
A six-match winning streak followed and promotion to the playoffs as the last team. After that, Boston, who won the regular season, Toronto, who were among the championship candidates, and most recently – early Thursday morning – perennially successful Carolina started singing.
The Florida Panthers are playing in the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 27 years!
Problems with scoring by chance?
Naturally, the disappointment was huge for Carolina. It was the result, but also through the events of the match. There could have been more. The head coach Rod Brind’Amour and some players recently reminded that Carolina, which dominated the field events in many places, would have deserved more.
From the point of view of the hurricane group, the way it started the game was equally all too familiar. In a tight spot, scoring again lacked the right kind of sharpness. Carolina’s style of play under Brind’Amour has always included throwing everything at the goal. However, splashing pucks on the goal just for the sake of splashing the puck on the goal is not value in itself if the goal-scoring support measures do not work.
Carolina has been to the conference finals twice in four years, but has not won a single game in eight attempts. If the timeline is extended to the spring of 2009 – Brind’Amour was involved as a player then – the losing streak in the conference finals reaches twelve!
In recent years, it has been about scoring goals.
In the spring of 2019, it managed five hits in four conference finals, and six this spring. In the last five years, Carolina has exceeded the average of two goals scored only once in the series that ended the season. With numbers like these, it is impossible to win in the modern NHL.
Repeated problems in the possession game have contributed to sanding the road.
The balance of 0/4 in Thursday’s cut-off game also reflects the big picture. The superiority powers of the previous five springs are recorded at twelve percent in the match series that interrupted the season. The reading is weak when taking into account the superior powers (21.1%) from the regular season side of the same period.
It’s hard to put the problems of scoring or power play into the peak of the variance with five spring picks.
Where are the powers of the top players?
Sure, it’s hard to talk about Carolina this year without bringing up injuries. The club management recognized the above-mentioned problems already last summer and acquired a top-class goalscorer Max Pacioretty From Vegas specifically with spring in mind. However, the Yankees shortstop did not keep up and in the end played only five games in the regular season.
The side also had a number one piece Andrei Svetshnikov.
The team still cannot go behind injuries alone.
If you look at Carolina’s season-ending streaks from the last few years, the scoring pressure of the key players has been at a high level, and this also applies Sebastian Ahoa. Aho has scored well, but 25 matches and four scored goals is not what is expected from a Finnish star.
More than five hits in these cutoff streaks can only be reached Teuvo Teräväinen (7), who sat out this year’s game against Florida after being injured.
In this time, the NHL is above all other goal-scoring competitions.
Of course, the lines are tightened in the playoffs and things are also tried to be done better defensively, but in the NHL of the new era, top skills are of enormous importance. Florida beat Carolina specifically through the top players – and not necessarily in overall beauty, but in terms of the scoring game.
Matthew Tkachuk scored three winning goals in the series. Sebastian Aho did not score a single goal in the series.
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