Carolina Hurricanes: The Goalie Problem

The Carolina Hurricanes lack a true starting goalie. How will they resolve this before next season?

The Carolina Hurricanes are better than anyone gives them credit for. Even before the Dougie Hamilton trade, they featured one of the best defenses in the NHL. They also have an underrated offensive core.

Unfortunately, a large hole in the Hurricanes lineup exists between the pipes. The Hurricanes do not have a true starting goaltender. They haven’t had one since Cam Ward back in 2010-11. He was technically their starter in previous years but rarely provided solid goaltending.

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Before signing with the Chicago Blackhawks, the Hurricanes had been relying on the services of Ward for over a decade now. Even when everyone knew that he was no longer a starter, he still had the starting job. For the 2017-18 season, Scott Darling was supposed to be the answer to this problem.

Darling was coming off of a fantastic year with the Chicago Blackhawks and was set to take the place of Ward. Except he did not. Darling finished with a lowly .888 save percentage, forcing a34-year-old Ward back into the starting position.

Now that he has left for the Blackhawks, Scott Darling and newly signed Petr Mrazek make up the goaltending tandem for the Hurricanes. If the Hurricanes really want to become contenders next season, then this just isn’t good enough.

Appearing in 39 games with 2 different teams, Mrazek finished with an .896 save percentage. It seems insane that the Canes have not made any strides to acquire a goaltender with at least a .900 percentage.

Preparing for next season

Even if the Hurricanes managed to get their hands on a consistent .905 or .910 goalie, they would be a lot better off. Just look at their advanced stats from last season. The Canes finished with the highest Corsi rating and third-highest Fenwick rating in the league.

They also finished fourth in shots for, with 2780, and allowed the fewest shots in the league, at 2367. This makes for a shot differential of +413, the best in the league. The answer is obvious. Carolina missed the playoffs because of bad goaltending.

Albeit, the lack of scoring and abysmal shooting percentage didn’t help either. The low shooting percentage the Hurricanes suffered from last season, however, is probably not sustainable. Poor goaltending is.

So, the Hurricanes have a choice to make. With the Hamilton trade, it looks like the Canes want to be contenders. They traded away their best defenseman and a good offensive prospect for short-term improvement, after all. This is the kind of thing contenders tend to do.

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The first option is to pray that Scott Darling will find his former self. This definitely isn’t impossible. Save percentage is variable and goaltenders can definitely have bad seasons. If the Hurricanes had given up on Ward after his first bad season, then he would have been gone long ago. Maybe Darling deserves another chance.

Of course, if Darling repeats his performance from last year, then the Hurricanes will have wasted another season. This means wasting a year of Teuvo Teravainen and Sebastian Aho at great contracts. It means wasting a year of a fantastic defense, featuring Hamilton.

The other option is to find a replacement. Don’t get me wrong, this is no easy task. It will be difficult, and possibly costly. However, it might be worth the risk. Placing the hopes and dreams of an upcoming season on the shoulders of an under-performing goalie is probably not a great idea.

I do not know exactly who the Canes should go after, but I think that something probably needs to change. It may be time for the Hurricanes to go after that elusive starting goalie.

Conclusion

The Hurricanes have a season-defining choice to make this offseason. The thing is, there really is no option to ‘Play it safe’ in their current situation. They can either make no changes, and risk another year out of the playoffs, or increase their chances by taking a risk.

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For the Hurricanes, there is no easy way out of this conundrum.