The Carolina Hurricanes retired Eric Staal's number 12 in a ceremony Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025. The Carolina Hurricanes are known for being a team that outworks and overwhelms opponents with relentless pressure and an unwavering compete level. They create chaos in front of the net, hound pucks and their aggressive systems keep opposing players on their toes all over the ice. At least, that's what their reputation says. But it seems that as of late, the Canes have been riding off that reputation more than reinforcing it. Tonight, it was a 4-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, a game in which Carolina put together only about 15 minutes of solid hockey and saw the whole game unraveled due to multiple bad turnovers and just an overall lack of urgency. A combination of poor goaltending and even worse defensive turnovers saw Buffalo take a lead 43 seconds into the game, double it in the second period and then triple it at the tail end of that period. "It wasn't good," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "We essentially just gave goals away, again. The first one can't go in, but we were loose on our gap then a turnover with no pressure on us, we just turn it over, and then with six seconds left we don't line up right on a faceoff win and it's in our net. We just made poor decisions tonight and you can't do that in this league." Sure Carolina had a better showing in the third period, scoring two goals to make it look like a closer game, but the overall lack of urgency and poor decision making put the game too far out of reach. "The urgency needs to be there right from the get-go and it wasn't," Brind'Amour said. If you start to rewind the season though, you see that games like this aren't just one offs anymore. The past two or so months have been a pattern of alternating between playing to that identity and then throwing it all out the window. "It's definitely surprising," said Jaccob Slavin on the team's inconsistencies. "We're known as a team that competes every night and consistently we have a chance to win every night, but lately, I feel like we haven't had chances to win every night. We're not helping ourselves when we play like that and again, it's not good enough as a group. To a man, it's not good enough and so we can all be better." The Hurricanes know how to play successful, winning hockey. They've shown that for years now. Yet for some reason, they're just incapable of committing to that as of late. Is it fatigue with the systems? An unwillingness to commit to Rod Brind'Amour's game for the grind of an 82-game season or is it something else? For one, the inconsistent play of the goaltenders probably doesn't help. Tonight, backup netminder Dustin Tokarski let in a handful of bad goals and a few nights prior, Pyotr Kochetkov did the same thing. It also doesn't help the goaltenders when the defense is constantly committing turnovers and giving up odd-man rushes and grade-A chances. On that note, you just can't keep rolling Brent Burns out for 22+ minutes a night. The nearly 40-year-old defenseman can still play and is assuredly a future Hall-of-Famer, but Father Time comes for everyone and it's apparent that his game is on the decline. His minutes should follow suit. "Tonight, I thought our D weren't very good," Brind'Amour said. "Usually that's our strength, but that wasn't good enough. The way they were handling the puck. It seems to be one thing one night and another the next. We do need to be better and that's just it. At the end of the day, the urgency needs to be more dialed in from the start of games." Defense has always been a calling card for Carolina but it seems this year that the team has taken a step back in that department, especially when it comes to defending around the net. This year, the team is allowing 2.78 goals per game, the most in the past five seasons. But as Brind'Amour hinted, defense hasn't been the only issue. What about the team's top forwards going dry for extended lengths? What about the difficulty with getting to the dirty areas where you need to go to score goals in this league? Offense has always seemed like the shortcoming for the Hurricanes, who rack up shots but don't always get the results, but this year seems like the team has taken a bigger hit in that department than in years past. For one, they're averaging less shots per game than in any of the past five seasons and outside of Martin Necas' hot-start, the team's top forwards have struggled to score at 5v5. In fact, the team's four highest paid forwards (Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, Seth Jarvis and Necas) have combined for only 20 5v5 goals this year. For reference, Jack Roslovic has 14 himself, Eric Robinson has nine and Jordan Staal and Jordan Martinook both have seven. But again, you can't say that this is a bad team or that there's something inherently wrong with them, because in the games they win, they usually look pretty dang good. In those games, all the problems seem to melt away and everyone is always like, 'Can this be a win that gets the Hurricanes rolling?' However, as of late, it has inevitably come crashing back down to games like this one against Buffalo where it's clear that inconsistency remains the biggest issue for the Canes. But because of the highs, I really don't think there's any major issue at play such as a poisoned locker room or a disinterested team. You'd expect that if Carolina was out here losing something like four or five games in a row and just getting outplayed, but that isn't so much what is happening. The team also isn't lacking in effort. The Hurricanes try hard to win every night — and any theory against it is just spewing hot air —but it feels sometimes that that effort just isn't directed toward where it needs to go. Instead, the biggest issues I feel we're seeing, are just a plethora of errors defensively, a lack of oomph offensively and a failing sense of urgency. Overall, there isn't just one thing that you can pick out as being the key to fixing the team — because if they knew what it was, it would have already been addressed by now — but I also do think there just needs to be a little bit more buy-in both physically and mentally from everyone. Because every second of every shift matters. There's enough talent on this team for it to be successful, but they also can't assume the game is going to come easy to them because of that. It's a tough league and Carolina just isn't good enough to be coasting, forcing plays or taking the kinds of breaths that they've been taking as of late. Whether it's avoiding a tough in-zone turnover, getting to the net front for a tip/rebound or battling in the corners for loose pucks, it needs to happen and happen with regularity if this team wants to reestablish itself as a top-toer contender.
