Accustomed to success, Carolina’s recent side slide took some kind of rock bottom at the beginning of December in Vancouver on the Canadian side. The fourth consecutive loss made the team react and the locker room doors remained closed for a long time.
One head coach Rod to Brind’Amour of the themes brought up was related to scoring.
– The top players of this team simply do not produce enough results. That makes this difficult, the pilot told North American media.
So who are the “top players” in Carolina’s case?
Of course Sebastian Ahoa, Andrei Svetshnikov, Teuvo Teräväi and so on.
What may have been less noticed is that this core also needs to be wounded Jesperi Kotkaniemi along with a few other young people. It is true that Kotkaniemi, 23, is still a young player, but the time for a soft landing is now over.
The raw realism is that Kotkaniemi is already playing in the NHL for the sixth season. When you think about today’s NHL, the new generation of talent needs four to six years, depending on the case, to hit it big – if they are there to hit it. An example of a hard class can be used Jack Hugheswith which the final breakthrough came in the fourth season.
However, the result does not want to follow what Kotkaniemi did.
Last season’s 43 (18+25) power points gave promise, as did last autumn’s sharp start, but since then the stick has drifted downhill at quite a speed.
In the case of Kotkaniemi, the previous 26 matches include one goal. 32 previous matches, power 3+2 and plus-minus -10 entries in the cold.
The result does not match the description
The situation is starting to become difficult, because the club has planned a second center for themselves from Pori. Of course, the brakeman can also play helpfully in that position Jordan Staal. In a perfect world, Kotkaniemi would lead the second chain of results and Staal and his sandpaper assistants would focus on darkening the opponent’s first chain – that’s where he’s probably the best in the series.
However, Staal is not in charge of the profit unit.
It is also worth taking into account Kotkaniemi’s wider role in the team. Ässäkasvatti is not part of the underpowered lineups, so you should be able to bring your own contribution to the table playing five on five or as a member of another superior lineup. Now the game freezes in both.
And money, it always plays its role in the NHL.
It may sometimes be forgotten that Kotkaniemi is the fourth highest paid player on Carolina’s offensive line with an annual income of almost five million. Two years ago, the club paid more than 38 million US dollars to the Finnish player with a long contract.
It is only and only a high-class investment from a championship-seeking club in a player who had 11 goals and 34 points on his record at the time of signing the contract. The Hurricanes want a return on that investment, here and now.
Kotkaniemi is not a player that Carolina would have to wait another two or three years to blossom. He is paid a big man’s salary in a big man’s team, where he has the role of a big man – and with it, the responsibility of a big man.
Loose talk about growing pains is idleness. The Hurricanes’ hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina is not Toronto, Montreal or Edmonton, but the pressure on the team is always growing. If Kotkaniemi wants to operate in the chain of results of a successful team, he must be able to play under the pressure at hand and forge a result on the table.
The team has been openly aiming for the championship for several years and has fallen short every time in its championship run. And every time for the same reason: in tough places, the collective cannon has shrunk to a teddy bear gun. The club has planned Kotkaniemi as one solution to this problem.
When Brind’Amour in Vancouver talked about the productivity of the top players, he also talked about Kotkaniemi.
Player of the spring – sort of
And Kotkaniemi is not a player for whom the Main Series could only serve as a warm-up for the playoffs, even though Pori’s madness meets flowers in the spring. Kotkaniemi’s Player Profile fits the aggressive spirit of the playoffs and this has been hinted at, but 29 playoff games in Carolina include a stat line of 3+6 and -9. In Carolina’s internal points exchange, the ranking is 8th, in the power statistics Kotkaniemi is the weakest.
There is no denying that Kotkaniemi has not developed comprehensively and is doing a lot of good things in the rink from night to night. The naked eye and deep data give strong evidence of the ability to get to the finish line. At the same time, it is clear that a player cannot be praised endlessly for a good effort.
That’s not how the NHL works. The NHL is a high-class entertainment business that is driven solely by results. Especially when you’re only aiming for the championship.
In the Finnish NHL team, there are a few other players who are planned for the result unit, whose playing has ten good and one hundred beautiful, but not the most important thing, i.e. the result. Whatever the contract, the end result is the same in all cases: fading into the lower chains or transfer to a new environment.
This is also happening to Kotkaniemi, who has sunk into the fourth chain, who is currently a player of less than ten minutes with an annual salary of almost five million.
This is the famous raw realism.