Agree 100% here. Just watch them play. How many shots do they take a game that have 0 chance of going in? Other teams don't take these shots (at least not nearly as many). It was the same in the Bill Peters era. Its gotta either be coaching or the JAs in the stands yelling "shoooot" are having more of an effect than you'd think.
I think a major element of it is that Peters emphasized holding onto the puck or taking shots at all costs, which meant lots of perimeter passing and perimeter shots- both of which are among the least effective things you can possibly do offensively. Rod has not corrected that, though there were some early signs he would.
In order to score, you need to drive to high danger areas with the puck before you take shots. This means you'll have a higher number of turnovers, but also MUCH better offensive opportunities. To drive to the center, you need physical power a la Ferland, or you need skilled hands to deke through people, a la Aho, or really fancy skating along with decent hands like... Skinner. Over the last few years, Skinner was the ONLY player to really take steps to move to high danger areas and get high percentage chances- it made him an incredibly effective goalscorer. It earned him the earnest hate of all of his coaches and many of the dumber fans, who called him a cancer and a defensive liability because he didn't go with the tremendously stupid strategy of only ever taking worthless shots from the boards. He wasn't a team player because, until the co-captaincy fiasco, they were never able to actually beat out his desire to play effective hockey. Last year, he was ineffective. He also hewed much more closely to the Peters system then he ever had. Yes, he turned the puck over more often than most players, but he did it by creating chances, and he got the puck back more than he turned it over. He had one of the best takeaway to turnover ratios in the league, let alone on the team. He took a lot of risks and scored a lot of goals. He only became less effective when he stopped taking risks because he stopped giving a f*** about the team that had so consistently f***ed him over. The team that slandered him because he decided to play good hockey when the coaches were trying to force him to playing a system that everyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell was a disaster. So now he's back to playing his game and is on a 50+ goal pace.
Early in the season, Rod had talked a lot about taking risks to make big plays, and that was one reason I was giving him a lot of rope. But the recent spate of useless risk and goal free hockey while refusing to play players who actually take risks and get results has convinced me- Rod needs to go. Now. As does Waddell- and I really think we need to be talking more about whether Tulsky is a significant source of these problems as well. The maximize corsi to magically win games on a budget approach stinks like high heaven of a stat nerd who doesn't actually understand the dynamics of the game that are actually driving the numbers. Ever since Tulsky was hired, we've heard about how the Hurricanes are trying to integrate advanced stats more and more deeply into hockey ops- I think our current system and our current results may be the fruit of that, not in spite of it.
