tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
Vegas and NJ are top-4 in the league right now for Goals Scored. Arguably two of the least talented squads in the NHL. Meanwhile Edmonton is dead last and Pittsburgh is scoring at the same rate as the Canes.
It's frustrating but I want to give it another 10 games. Aho can't hit the net to save his life (despite generating a lot of chances) and the entire team seems to be mired in an "Over-Engineer the play" mindset. The only guys playing consistent, simple games are the 4th line and Skinner (who - surprise surprise has 7 goals).
Edmonton at least makes sense because their PP has been atrocious (50% worse than ours even) so you'd expect them to be missing a lot of goals right now. Whereas Jersey's inexplicably running the 5th best PP in the league so you'd expect them to be overrepresented in the goals department.
Vegas and Pittsburgh are basically just mirror images of each other. Nobody seriously thinks Vegas is going to continue to have half a dozen players at 30-goal pace, just like nobody expects Crosby to finish the season with like 70 points. The broad consensus is that those teams aren't what they appear to be at the moment, and will return to form soon enough.
Carolina... we don't exactly have a shining history of offensive production to back up the idea that this team is going to springboard to a different level sometime soon. We are carrying three (3) forwards who have scored more than 50 points in a season at some point in their career. Two of those are Skinner and Williams, who are already operating at max capacity. The third is Stempniak, who's mysteriously absent and may not be coming back any time soon (or in game shape).
So beyond that, it's entirely a matter of hoping and praying that the middle-range young guys (Aho, Teravainen, Lindholm, Rask) turn out to be what we thought they were. And replicating their past stats won't cut it. We need Lindhom to build on his career-high 45 points. We need more than 49 from Aho, more than 42 from Turbo, more than 48 from Rask. Otherwise there's little chance we build on that 17th-19th scoring range that we've held for the past 4 years running.
I'm willing to give them more time, too, but there's also a harsh possibility that these guys don't get much better than what we've seen already. For example, watching Aho cut through the defense once or twice a game doesn't excuse the 10 times he fumbles with the puck on what should have been a clean zone entry. Watching Lindholm bang around in the corners is nice, but does nothing if he can't drive the puck to the net. Those things NEED to get better, and in fairly short order, or we're totally screwed because we're not squeezing any more juice from Skinner and Williams.