I went and looked this morning and the last time the Canes managed to score more goals in a season than they allowed was .... drumroll for Capt Obvious .... you guessed it, 2009. The last time they made the playoffs. Shock of shocks.
If you project out the goals for and goals against thus far to projected 82 game totals, we're looking at 220 for and 255 against. That's 5 goals more in the plus column, but almost 20 more in the minus column. And you thought our goaltending and defense was bad last year. Francis and Peters actually managed to do worse. Congrats guys. But the reality is, if they had taken a significant step up in scoring that wouldn't matter nearly as much. We just don't have the offense to be as bad as we are on defense and still compete beyond a middling level. And look ... the guys are trying, because our position in the standings is not nearly as bad as it could be given the raw numbers.
I'm not even interested in playing "fix the lines" with this core group. The bottom line is the same ... until they find a number one center and a real starting goaltender, none of it matters. Because we just don't have enough of anything else that matter to make up for those holes. And those are just the basic, obvious holes. We don't have a proper number defenseman either. Our fourth line sort of sucks, our third pairing is a nightmare, we have no physical presence to speak of, our leadership seems kind of crap ... and on and on.
If you project out the goals for and goals against thus far to projected 82 game totals, we're looking at 220 for and 255 against. That's 5 goals more in the plus column, but almost 20 more in the minus column. And you thought our goaltending and defense was bad last year. Francis and Peters actually managed to do worse. Congrats guys. But the reality is, if they had taken a significant step up in scoring that wouldn't matter nearly as much. We just don't have the offense to be as bad as we are on defense and still compete beyond a middling level. And look ... the guys are trying, because our position in the standings is not nearly as bad as it could be given the raw numbers.
I'm not even interested in playing "fix the lines" with this core group. The bottom line is the same ... until they find a number one center and a real starting goaltender, none of it matters. Because we just don't have enough of anything else that matter to make up for those holes. And those are just the basic, obvious holes. We don't have a proper number defenseman either. Our fourth line sort of sucks, our third pairing is a nightmare, we have no physical presence to speak of, our leadership seems kind of crap ... and on and on.
