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    Ryan Henkel
    Feb 3, 2025, 19:51

    The Canes have scored just two power play goals since the start of the new year.

    The Carolina Hurricanes own the league's worst power play since the start of the new year.

    They've scored just two power play goals on 42 man-advantage opportunities or in other words. a 4.8% success rate.

    4.8% in 16 games.

    I'm not sure there's been a worse stretch for the team, ever (The Canes had a 9.5% success rate on the man advantage against the New York Rangers in last season's playoffs for reference).

    And when things are going as poorly as they are, change is inevitable.

    And at the team's practice Monday morning, that change came with brand new power play units.

    Brent Burns and Jackson Blake were moved onto the top unit, cycling out with Shayne Gostisbehere and Andrei Svechnikov.

    So the top unit is now made up of Burns, Blake, Sebastian Aho, Mikko Rantanen and Seth Jarvis.

    And PP2 is now made up of Gostisbehere, Svechnikov, Taylor Hall, Jack Roslovic and Jesperi Kotkaniemi.

    Losing Martin Necas, who was team's leading power play scorer and a zone-entry machine, definitely hurts and so too has the illness and absences of some key players as of late, but the power play was struggling even before all of that happened.

    And it's not to say that the man advantage has been awful, I mean Aho had a chance go off the post on the power play last game, but at the end of the day, you need to have results.

    According to Natural Stat Trick, the Canes have generated 127 chances on the power play since Jan. 1 (the eighth most in the league).

    In that span, they have an expected goals for total of 8.95. While that ranks just 15th in the league, it's still a far cry from their actual results.

    So the hope is that some new looks can help change their momentum and also give them at least two competent looking units.

    And if you want to look at some sort of bright side, at the very least, the Hurricanes have not given up a shorthanded chance in that stretch either.


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