CAR @ EDM 6-1 L The Carolina Hurricanes were ran out of Rogers Place Wednesday night, losing 6-1 to the Edmonton Oilers, in what was perhaps their most embarrassing performance of the season. Before the first minute of game time had passed, the Canes were already losing 2-0 after two disastrous defensive misplays and by the end of the first period it was 4-0. Nobody looked good, nobody was noticeable. It was bad. Flat out terrible. "We're on our way to losing 50-0 at this point," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour midway through the game during the TNT bench interview. "I've never seen our team play this brutal. I'm lost for words to be quite honest. We weren't ready to start, that was clear. Now we're just doing things... not the way we do it. This is what you get." Fans can clamor for a new goaltender and while the Hurricanes' netminding wasn't inspiring, when you're giving up what are in essence tap-ins, nobody is going to have a good save percentage. It's formulaic failures. The Hurricanes have been the preeminent man-to-man team for years and perhaps one of the only man-on-man teams, and there's a reason for that rarity. When the Canes are on, they look like world beaters, capable of suffocating any opposing offense with ease. When just one guy is off, it collapses. It's such a fragile system and with the inconsistencies we've seen time and time again this season, the cracks in it are more noticeable than ever. Coming into the season, Carolina looked to have the best defense in the entire league. But that was on paper. On the ice, we've seen more of a mess than magnificence. Missed assignments, turnovers, poor pinches, flat-out just losing battles. You name it, we're seeing it with regularity. And it's hard to pinpoint a fixable problem because no one player has been consistently bad. It's been a rotating cast of off days every three or so outings. The problem is inconsistency, but how do you fix that? To be fair though, the Hurricanes do have some consistencies at least: Predictable offense, stemming from perhaps an outdated point shot heavy system. Working from low to high, pumping shots and causing chaos in front. An admirable strategy that's rooted in hard work, but also one that is completely predictable and luck dependent. And right now, it's seemingly handcuffing more than helping. Because the systems were built to raise the floor for a team that didn't have much talent. And it worked. However, the talent is now here and abundant, but it seems that the systems don't complement that talent. Which boils down to perhaps the true problem. It's less that the systems are bad and more so that the team is obviously just not responding to the systems. Something has to give. Carolina has the chance to flush this loss quickly with the next game coming less than 24 hours from now, a facedown with the Calgary Flames, and perhaps they channel this failure into a more positive outing, but even if they do, we're probably still going tp have this same conversation in a few weeks time.
