Despite the presence of Eric Staal, Alexander Semin, Jeff Skinner and others, the Carolina Hurricanes' offense has struggled to score with consistency this NHL season.
By sheer process of elimination, the onus for such struggles would seem to naturally fall on the team's depth contributors—and the statistics support such an assumption.
The 'Canes delivered a final knockout to their playoff aspirations via 5-1 and 2-1 losses to the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers, respectively, this past weekend. The pair of one-goal performances dropped their goals-per-game average to 2.47, ranking 20th in the league.
However, the Hurricanes' scoring leaderboard displays a surprisingly strong array of statistics. Skinner ranks 18th in the NHL with 26 goals, Andrej Sekera ranks sixth among all defenseman with 11 goals, Eric Staal leads the team with 52 points and Semin has 12 goals and 19 points in his last 21 games.
Even Jordan Staal has heated up recently.
Beneath that upper tier of stars, though, lies a messy, inefficient and coattail-riding landfill of depth contributors.
A ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Mark Jones
Carolina Hurricanes’ Lack of Offensive Depth Costly Again in 2013-14
March 18th, 2014 by Mark Jones Leave a reply »
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