RALEIGH, N.C. — The noise of the playoffs is long gone, replaced at PNC Arena by the sound of ice being pulled up and the clock ticking … ticking … ticking.
In the wake of the Carolina Hurricanes’ harsh second-round elimination at the hands of the New York Rangers, this group’s first real run as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender having established themselves as such over 82 games, there’s an equally harsh realization that this group as currently constructed doesn’t have many chances like that left.
There was a time when contracts for players like Jordan Staal, Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce seemed to stretch off into an indefinite future, but that future is now. Staal has one year left, and this week said he hasn’t made any decisions about his career beyond that. Pesce and Brady Skjei each have two years left. The goaltending tandem of Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta has a year to run.
In short, this team that has so captivated fans in its return to competitive relevance over the past four season, establishing itself this year as a regular-season powerhouse before failing to capitalize on home-ice advantage in the postseason in a disappointment to fans, players and coaches alike, only has so much time left to take the next step before facing a cap-crunched retooling.
“For years this franchise was talking about (making) the playoffs,” Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell said. “We’re not talking about the playoffs anymore. We’re talking about how we take that next step. And I think we continue to make progress and we’ll take the summer to look at everything we need to look at.”
For now, it doesn’t feel like big changes are coming, especially if Jesperi Kotkaniemi slots into Trocheck’s spot and Niederreiter and Tony DeAngelo re-sign and Jack Drury moves up. That would leave work to do only on the fringes, where veterans like Derek Stepan, Ian Cole and Brendan Smith are all free agents as well.
But there’s an opportunity here, if Trocheck departs, to use that cap space to try to provoke much bigger improvement in the area where it’s most needed, the area that most let them down in the playoffs. The Hurricanes did an excellent job creating chances both in the regular season and in the postseason, even on the misfiring power play. They did an execrably poor job finishing those chances,
You can create chances with hustle and hard work and effort and skill, and the Hurricanes do with all of that. But finishing is almost all the latter, pure skill, despite the legend of the “dirty goal” — deflections and bounces and kick-ins and all that. Andrei Svechnikov has it. Sebastian Aho has it. Seth Jarvis has it. Niederreiter, when he’s on a heater. But few others do. And for good reason: It’s rare, the kind of thing that gets you taken in the first round of the draft.
The Hurricanes have built a foundation that’s strong down the middle — at center, on defense, in goal — like any contender. They need to put the frosting on that layer cake and add a finisher or two who can put them over the top in a series like the one the Hurricanes just lost.
Some of that should come from the continuing development of Svechnikov and Aho and Jarvis, although in the case of the first two, it’s fair to ask at this point just how much farther they’re going to go. Either way, the Hurricanes still desperately need an upgrade in pure skill, in a player with the hands to finish these chances the Hurricanes do such a good job of creating.
The most obvious fix is to wash their hands of Martin Necas, who actually managed to regress this season, and bring in a winger with proven finishing ability to replace him through free agency or trade. That would be an immediate upgrade to a roster that’s otherwise relatively set going into the summer, and whether it’s that or something else, this is a group that cries out for help in that area.
“It’s nice when you have Aho and Svechnikov and Jarvis,” Waddell said. “We’ve got a pretty good nucleus of guys. You look back on the blue line, you’ve got Slavin and Pesce and Skjei. They’re all under contract. That’s a pretty good starting point. Both goalies are back. Last year, we were talking here, we had a lot of holes to fill. We were fortunate that most of the positions we filled resulted in positives for us. We’ll assess it, but the nucleus is here and we need to make sure we round it out.”
The Hurricanes already had one kick at the can as a legitimate contender, and they only won one playoff round. Going into next season with the same known flaws would be malpractice.
