At the beginning of the season I posed a couple questions on both Twitter and Reddit asking who fans thought would lead the Carolina Hurricanes in points and goals and who would have the biggest breakout/bounce back season.
So let's see how everyone did:
Who will lead the team in goals?
This ended up being the least voted on poll mostly because I a) attached it as a thread to another poll and b) forgot to post it on Reddit.
But hey, you live and you learn.
Anyway, here is who the fans predicted would win.
Drum roll, please... badumdumdum...
Andrei Svechnikov
Oh, dang, well so much for that one.
Out of 110 total votes collected on Twitter, Svechnikov received 67 of them.
Everyone knew that Svech was coming off of ACL surgery, but the fans still had faith in him to overcome that and surge to the top.
However, he perhaps missed more time than most people thought at first.
The Results:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
Who did lead the team in goals?
Sebastian Aho - 36
Top 5 in Goals
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
Who will lead the team in points?
Now here's a question where I actually did manage to poll things correctly.
Out of 997 votes, the fans selected Sebastian Aho to once again lead the Hurricanes in points.
Aho had led the team in points for five consecutive seasons before Martin Necas usurped him last year, so the fanbase was confident he would be back on top this season.
And low and behold, they were right as Aho had his best season ever.
Surprisingly, there was not a ton of faith in Necas to repeat his breakout season and he did in fact have a step back in terms of production.
The Results:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
Who did lead the team in points?
Sebastian Aho - 89
Top 5 in Points
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
Who will have the biggest breakout/bounce back season?
Now while this can be a sort of subjective topic, there was a clear cut winner from Canes this year: Seth Jarvis.
After a low-scoring season last year, Jarvis absolutely exploded for his biggest season yet all while playing on a torn labrum and rotator cuff.
And it seems that the fanbase believed in him too.
Out of 1,472 votes, Jarvis took home over a third of them.
Others receiving a high number of votes included Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who by all accounts had a sizeable regression after a big second half in the prior year, and Teuvo Teravainen, who set a new career high in goals.
The Results:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
Who did have the biggest breakout season?
Seth Jarvis - 33 goals, 67 points
Other Receiving Votes (2022-23 -> 2023-24)
- undefined
18 goals, 43 points, 14:44 ATOI -> 12 goals, 27 points, 12:59 ATOI
- undefined
12 goals, 37 points -> 25 goals, 53 points
- undefined
24 games played, 0.909 save percentage, four shutouts -> 42 games played, 0.911 save percentage, four shutouts
- undefined
6 goals, 14 points, 14:07 ATOI -> 8 goals, 22 points, 15:12 ATOI
- undefined
38 games played, 2goals, 8 points, 10:47 ATOI -> 74 games played, 8 goals, 27 points, 12:17 ATOI
Final Thoughts
Interestingly enough, there was no difference in the order of vote getters between either site I polled as each side had the same players in the same order with similar percentages.
Overall, I think this type of exercise was a fun one to do and look back on.
It's something I'll be sure to do again and I'll definitely look to expand on the questions I ask for next year.
Be sure to let me know what kinds of questions you think I should ask.