Season in Review: Canes Fall Short of Postseason

This is the first installment in a four-part Season in Review series. Part One: Canes Fall Short of Postseason | Part Two: Forwards | Part Three: Defensemen | Part Four: Goaltenders
The 2017-18 season was going to be different for the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes traded for and signed their next starting goaltender. The team made a couple of shrewd moves around the expansion draft to add talent with a winning pedigree to its roster. On July 1, the Canes made a free agency splash to bring back an old friend and veteran. All of this on top of a young, talented roster that was another year more experienced and poised to take the next step.
There was palpable promise and hope, and expectations were reasonably high. The Hurricanes were an attractive pick by many to end their eight-year playoff drought, and why not?
Yes, the season was going to be different.
But, as Jakub Dylan crooned with The Wallflowers in the mid-1990s, "the only difference that I see is you are exactly the same as you used to be."

For the ninth straight season, the Hurricanes failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. On April 7, the team finished its season with a bittersweet 3-2 overtime win against the Tampa Bay Lightning and two days later, as the players cleaned out their lockers for the summer and fielded questions from the media for one last time, the ice at PNC Arena was melted down, scraped up and washed away.
Now, we're again dissecting the why instead of enjoying the how far.
It's disappointing. It's frustrating. It's maddening. Just ask the guys who lived it.
"It's not a fun feeling. It's been frustrating for myself personally and for this organization for a while now. It's just another year that we couldn't quite get the job done," Jordan Staal said. "It's frustrating. That's pretty much the only way I can put it."

"I think everyone is disappointed. As a group, we all wanted it," Jaccob Slavin said. "I don't think there's a guy in here that's not upset."
"It's always kind of bitter when you don't make the playoffs. This one kind of hurts a little bit more, especially with the expectations," Brett Pesce said. "We know what we had in the room. We believed we could have made it. That's the tough thing."
"We were expecting big things this year, but in a sense, I think we took a step backwards. We all have to take responsibility for that," Cam Ward said. "We just didn't get it done. That's disappointing."
"We clearly didn't rise to the occasion when other teams did. To watch playoff hockey right now is going to sting and hurt. I hope it hurts for everybody," Justin Williams said. "The same old story has been going on a long time here. People are fed up with it. This is my first year back here, and I don't accept it."

When and where and how did it go awry? After all, the Hurricanes were in a playoff spot as late in the season as early March. Threads had begun to unravel before then, though, and the Canes weren't able to salvage the tattered strings that remained.
"We were always right on the cusp of doing something but we just weren't able to get it done," Ward said.
"We kind of just hovered around .500," Staal said. "Then towards the end we had one bad streak, and that was it. It's a team that was close but wasn't good enough."
There wasn't one player, one game, one decision, one moment that unilaterally altered the course of the Canes' season; rather, it was a concert of situations that relegated the team to be extraordinarily ordinary - not bad, not great, just fine.
A season removed from scoring a career-high 37 goals, Jeff Skinner netted 24. After scoring 15 and then 16 and then 17 goals in his last three seasons, Justin Faulk potted just eight and was a career-worst minus-26. Scott Darling, brought in to be the Canes' starting netminder, stumbled in his transition, finishing with a 3.18 goals-against average and a .888 save percentage.
As a whole, the team never put together a winning streak of more than four games and finished with a 36-25-11 record and 83 points, a mirror image of Kirk Muller's final season behind the Canes' bench.
"It's disappointing. It's frustrating. You can throw out a lot of emotions. It's disappointing. That's about it," Skinner said. "You come to training camp to be playing in the playoffs. That's the goal every year. We didn't accomplish our goal, so disappointment is everyone's feelings right now."
READ: HURRICANES CLOSE OUT 2017-18 SEASON
Despite all the shortcomings of the 2017-18 Hurricanes, there was growth amongst the group, as well, that bodes well for the future.
Sebastian Aho is a burgeoning star. Not only did he improve upon every basic stat category from his rookie season, but he also paced the team in both goals (29) and points (65). He shares a kindred chemistry with Teuovo Teravainen, who had a breakout season with career highs across the board in goals (23), assists (41) and points (64).
"The Finns were great this year. Seabass has continued to take steps to be the player we were all hoping he'd be. He's turning into a really good player. That's been nice to see," Staal said. "A lot of other players have taken steps. It's a young group that's trying to find its way."
Williams might not have worn a letter on his sweater, but he was the unquestioned leader of this team.
"What didn't he bring back to this room? He was a leader," Ward said. "He's a guy who I respect a ton. I've played with him and won the Stanley Cup with him. He's Mr. Game 7 for a reason. He's been through it all. Thank God we had him. There were times when things weren't going well, and he's the one guy who will step up, say something and try to make a difference. You respect a guy like that. He's a guy you can definitely lean on here to be a veteran leader both on and off the ice."

Staal displayed incredible professionalism and poise throughout one of the most difficult times in his life off the ice. Elias Lindholm showed promise at his natural position in the middle of the ice. Ward delivered in a newfound back-up role. Valentin Zykov and Warren Foegele both made immediate impacts offensively in their short stints with the team. The kids in Charlotte? They're all right, indeed.
"We have guys who made strides. It wasn't all a failure," Williams said. "A lot of guys made strides of becoming better hockey players. We certainly need everybody to do that for us to get better."
Change is inevitably ahead.
"You only stay together if you win together. This team hasn't won. We haven't won. We didn't win. There's going to be changes," Williams said. "I don't think you can keep being unsuccessful in your goals and have the same things happen. I would imagine things will be a little different."
"Tom coming in, he wants to win and build a team that's going to win championships," Staal said. "He's going to do what it takes. That's exciting, and hopefully I'm a part of that moving forward."
The stinging, bitter taste of failure, especially in the face of heightened expectations, will only drive the Hurricanes to be better.
While the 2017-18 season wasn't different, despite well-founded beliefs that it would be, 2018-19 can be different - and it likely will be.
"I know that once you make the playoffs and you get a taste and you get that winning attitude with your teammates, the players that you battled all year long - and then when you have that taken away, it's different than not having to feel it in the first place," Williams said. "[Playoffs] is what I strive for now. It's not individual statistics or anything. It's team success. I want to have success here."
"It's got to sting more to lose. I think we can be more competitive," Ward said. "You want to be emotionally invested in winning and losing. We all know we've done way too much losing here. It's time to change that - it's over time to change that."