The Hurricanes have been a popular pre-season pick to get to the playoffs for a couple years, but they always seemed to fall short. So what has changed about this year's squad? AndrewBerkshire takes a look:
are big names in the goaltending world, but they’ve provided the Hurricanes with stability in net that hasn’t existed there for a long time. Just look at them compared to the previous few seasons of Hurricanes goalies.
Knowing that over this time period save percentage around the league has actually dropped, it’s pretty amazing that Mrazek has posted the best numbers of any Hurricanes goaltender in five seasons, and McElhinney has arguably been the next best on dangerous shots, fighting it out with Eddie Lack from 2016-17. But McElhinney played nearly twice the minutes that Lack did that year, so I would give him the edge in that one.
Mrazek and McElhinney didn’t have spectacular seasons — it’s just that they weren’t a problem and that’s really all it takes for a good team to push for the playoffs. Both are capable of giving superb performances and that’s obviously nice, but it’s the consistency in not blowing games that matters most.
The good underlying numbers the Hurricanes posted in previous years weren’t just noise, they were a signal that Carolina had serious promise. However, a lot of us in the analytics community bit too early on the broad strokes numbers when it was the slower, incremental improvement that made the Hurricanes what they are now: a dangerous playoff team that may even become a Stanley Cup contender.
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