The Carolina Hurricanes entered the 2018-19 season with a lot of bluster. New owner, new general manager, and new coach. Even with those wholesale changes they are basically the same team. Really good possession team with not a sliver of puck luck. They have set up shop at the bottom of the league yet again.
In the last five seasons the Hurricanes account for three spots in the bottom ten PDO teams. Last year they were 98.01, 2014-15 they were at 97.18, and this season they are currently the worst PDO team of the last five years at 96.74. A team trying to tank couldn’t do better.
It’s a real shame because the Hurricanes do a great job of controlling shot attempts.
Carolina is the best team in the NHL at generating shot attempts and the fourth best at preventing them. Perhaps one of these years they’ll get some saves from their goaltenders and be more of threat.
Somebody not suffering anymore from the PDO bug is Bryan Rust. He is lighting it up after having a miserable start to the season. Since registering a hat trick against the Chicago Blackhawks he has been on a torrid goal scoring pace. He has eight goals in the Penguins last six games after going 21 games without one. He has goals in four straight games. His shooting percentage prior to the goal burst was a team worst 2.38% among players who had at least one goal for the Penguins during that time frame. He is now sitting at 13.4% which is three percent better than his career average. It’s been quite a stretch for Rust.
After tonight’s contest the Penguins will be off until December 27th when they host Detroit.
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