Hockey Bytes: The Canes' Time Is Now

Stanley Cup favorite Carolina needs to actually deliver. Plus, what's ailing a few surprising dud contenders.

Welcome to Hockey Bytes — a ✨brand-new spin-off✨ of my baseball column, in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various hockey spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Hockey Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

🧊 Hurricane Season?

Martin Nečas is on pace for the best season of his career, by far. (Jess Starr / The Hockey Writers)

It’s still quite early in the NHL season, but one of the big early risers in my Stanley Cup forecast model are the Carolina Hurricanes — who started the season merely among the favorites, but have risen to the very top of the odds this week:

I wrote in last week’s column about another one of those fast risers — the Winnipeg Jets — and their repeated history of quick starts and slow finishes. The Hurricanes are not like that. They have been one of the best second-half teams, and they’ve won at least one round of the playoffs in five of the past six seasons (and each of the past four).

But we have been here before, in the sense of Carolina looking like an early favorite but hitting a ceiling at some point in the playoffs. And that ceiling usually appears in the form of the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins or one of the State of Florida teams (the Lightning and Panthers) that have hoisted the Cup in three of the past five seasons.

The Rangers in particular are used to ruining promising years for the Hurricanes: They came back from down 3-2 to beat Carolina in the 2022 playoffs, and they used a four-goal third-period explosion in the clincher to eliminate the Canes in six games last spring. Those losses were made all the more painful by the fact that Carolina and New York have shared a handful of players over the years — including Brady Skjei, Jesper Fast, Vincent Trocheck, Tony DeAngelo and now, Jack Roslovic.

Even so, the Canes have won a lot of playoff games for a team that didn’t actually skate for the Cup (much less win it). If we include the expanded qualifying round of the 2020 playoffs, Carolina has 38 total playoff wins in the previous six seasons with zero trips to the Finals. There has only been one team in all of NHL history who won more playoff games in a six-season span without at least one Finals trip:

(Yes, of course it’s the Leafs at No. 1.)

It’s a backhanded compliment to be on that type of list, because many of those teams were quite good! Some even went on to have breakthroughs down the line. For instance, the Sharks would make the Final within five years of their entry, and the late-’70s Islanders would immediately rattle off five straight Finals appearances, winning four straight.

Finding themselves atop the Cup odds in what would be a seventh consecutive playoff trip, it’s time for Carolina to start following the same formula. And they’re well positioned to do it.

They remain by far the best possession team in the league, though that is almost always the case in recent seasons. The more interesting development? An offense that has risen from No. 15 in 2022-23 to No. 8 last year and now No. 4 in scoring this season. While leading scorer Martin Nečas probably isn’t going to finish at his current pace of 52 goals and 149 points, Roslovic and Shayne Gostisbehere are already making up for the losses of Skjei and Teuvo Teräväinen in what might be an offense that matches the usual fearsomeness of Carolina’s defense.¹

Yes, the Panthers and Rangers still lurk atop the Cup odds out of the East, which could pose a problem yet again for Carolina. In 44 percent of Wednesday’s simulations where Carolina makes the conference finals, either Florida or New York was waiting for them there. (And the Canes only won 48 percent of those matchups.) But this team isn’t getting any younger, either. The time is now for Carolina to have its breakthrough, or one of these years it will run out of chances for that to happen.

🧊 What to Do With the Oilers, Avs, Preds and Bruins?

At the other end of the spectrum from the Canes (and Jets), we have a quartet of presumed contenders who have each lost at least 2.5 percentage points from their preseason Cup odds: the Edmonton Oilers (-5.6), Colorado Avalanche (-4.7), Nashville Predators (-3.2) and Boston Bruins (-2.8).

Each will probably get their own dedicated space in this column as the season progresses, but I thought I’d quickly identify the one area that is most responsible for their tumble in the rankings early on.

• Edmonton: Scoring (30th in Goals per Game). It’s always shocking to see the Oilers — who scored the fourth-most GPG of any team last year behind big seasons from Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman and Evan Bouchard — rank among the worst offensive squads, even if some of that was due to McDavid missing games (and it’s something we saw them recover from last year). Big thing to watch is how their 27th-ranked power play can get going with McDavid returning to the lineup.

• Colorado: Goaltending (32nd in Save Percentage). The Avs rank a surprising 32nd (i.e., dead last) in goals per game allowed at 4.15 per contest, which recalls the days of the horrendous 2016-17 Avalanche. That was their last squad to miss the playoffs, and it’s a danger to happen this season, too — their odds are down to 57 percent. Chief among the culprits is the sieve-like netminding of Justus Annunen, Alexandar Georgiev and Kaapo Kähkönen, who have already been worth -12.7 goals above average in just 13 games.

• Nashville: Offense from Forwards (31st in Pts from Fs). I was fascinated to see how the Preds would do in 2024-25 after an active offseason that saw them add the second-most net Goals Above Replacement from last season of any team (and the most of any team that seemed poised to actually be good this year). But newcomers Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault have not done a whole lot yet — combined, they have just 4 goals and 8 assists — while standbys like Filip Forsberg, Gustav Nyquist and Ryan O'Reilly are also off to slow starts. The offense from D-men isn’t much better (paging Roman Josi?), but the production from forwards has been nearly nonexistent.

• Boston: Defense and goaltending (22nd in Goals Against per Game). Technically, the Bruins rank even worse (27th) on offense, but seeing them struggle at the other end of the ice is more jarring for a team that hasn’t so much as fallen outside the Top 5 in goals allowed since 2016-17. Both the D and the netminding have been uncharacteristically mediocre, but it’s fair to single out Jeremy Swayman and the goalies, who conspicuously rank 24th in SV% after Swayman held himself out of training camp for a new contract before the season. (No, that is not going over too well with Boston fans.) There’s no real reason for the Bruins to fall off this much — was Matt Grzelcyk really that important? — and I expect them to bounce back on D, but it’s weird for them to rank this low at any point in a season.

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Filed under: NHL, Hockey, Hockey Bytes

1. Of course, goaltending remains an eternal question — particularly with Freddie Andersen now injured again.