There really couldn’t have been a more devastating injury for this team. The Carolina Hurricanes have lost their star goal scorer Andriy Svechnikov for the rest of the year as he has torn his ACL, leaving the team bereft of goal scorers.
This was the one Stanley Cup contending team in the Eastern Conference that couldn’t afford injuries or suspension to its offensive core. And especially not to its go-to goal scorers.
For those who have not seen the news or where not watching the Hurricanes vs. Devils game last night, Andriy Svechnikov, the Hurricanes young star goal scorer, tore his ACL as he was cutting across the middle of the ice, obviously ending his season and playoff hopes instantly. Tough news for the Canes, right? Well, I think it gets even worse when you look at their playoff hopes without him.
To be honest, I think the Hurricanes are doomed to suffer an early playoff exit without Svechnikov as he is not only the team’s 2nd-leading goal scorer and one of the most explosive offensive players in the NHL (he won the fastest skaters competition at the All-Star game this year), but he also is one of the few players this team has that can reliably score.
Before I get into the team stats, I’ll pose you all a question: can you guess how many twenty goal scorers the Hurricanes have this season? 1? 2? 15?
If you said 3, you’d be correct as Svechnikov (obviously), Sebastion Aho (27 goals), and Martin Necas (25 goals) all have breached the 20-goal milestone for the team this season.
Now, this stat of 3-5 20-goal scorers is pretty ubiquitous across the current Eastern playoff teams as the Bruins (Pasternack, Bergeron, Marchand, Debusk) have four, the Lightning (Kucherov, Stamkos, Point, Killorn, Hagel) have five, the Maple Leafs (Tavares, Marner, Mattews, Nylander, Bunting) have five, the Devils (Hughes, Hischier, Bratt, Mercer) have four, the Penguins (Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Zucker, Rakell) have five, and the Rangers (Zibanejad, Kreider, Panarin) have three.
So, if Hurricanes match up pretty well with their competitors in 20-goal scorer, why am I bringing this up? Well, the obvious answer is that if you take away one 20-goal scorer from the Hurricanes roster, they’d obviously only have two left and would leave them on par with teams like the Columbus Blue Jackets (Laine, Jenner), the Philadelphia Flyers (Konecny), and the Washington Capitals (Ovechkin).
You know, the bottom feeders/lottery teams in the Eastern Conference! If that doesn’t ring alarm bells in the Hurricanes management’s heads, then I don’t know what would.
Oh, wait, I actually do.
If you look even closer at the Hurricanes goal scoring stats, they only have four players (Jordan Staal being the other player with 16 goals) that have crossed the 15-goal threshold. What’s the rest of the Eastern Conference’s tallies in that field? The Bruins have 6, the Lightning have 7, the Maple Leafs have 6, the Devils have 6, the Penguins have 6, and the Rangers have 6.
Thus, if you take away Svechnikov’s goal tallies (which you have to as he’s going to miss the entire postseason), the Hurricanes are trailing their Eastern Conference opponents by 3-4 less 15-goal scorers. That’s really bad!
And it’s shown in the Hurricanes’ team goals for (GF) stat this season as the team has only scored 217 goals in 65 games. Now, such a tally may be good enough to get them joint second in the Metropolitan Division (the Devils’ 235 goals is the best), but it wouldn’t even get them in the Top-5 of the Atlantic Division (Bruins: 245, Sabres: 242, Lightning: 233, Panthers: 229, Maple Leafs: 226).
Essentially, this is a problem with the lack of depth scoring the Hurricanes are getting from their 3rd line, 4th line, and defensive pairings as even though they are keeping out the second least number of goals in the conference (165; Boston’s 142 is 1st), they aren’t scoring at a good enough rate to keep up with their opponents. Or they won’t be now without Svechnikov’s 26 goals.
Like I said, this injury is going to absolutely wreck the Canes come their matchups against the likes of New Jersey, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Pittsburgh, or one of the Atlantic teams if they make it to the Conference Finals (or see one of them as a 2nd vs. 7th Wild Card matchup).
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