Tweetmail No. 219: Empty Net, Improvements & Playoffs

Hello and welcome to Tweetmail, a weekly feature on CarolinaHurricanes.com in which I take your Twitter questions about the Carolina Hurricanes or other assorted topics and answer them in mailbag form. Hopefully the final product is insightful to some degree, and maybe we have some fun along the way.
Let's get to it.

Thanks to Wendi for sending this question in because it sparked a little deep dive into the numbers surrounding empty-net goals and pulling the goaltender. (And, don't worry, Wendi, we all have that playoff-watch haze at the moment.)
The Hurricanes have pulled their goaltender near the end of regulation 24 times this season. Six of those instances have resulted in the team scoring a goal. It happened most recently on March 19 against Pittsburgh, when Justin Williams tied the game on a rebound off an offensive zone faceoff win with the extra attacker on. The Canes would go on to win that game in a shootout.
It also happened on Oct. 4 vs. NYI (Jordan Staal, 2-1 OTL), Oct. 13 at MIN (Williams, 5-4 OTW), Jan. 22 at CGY (Sebastian Aho, 3-2 OTL), Feb. 3 vs. CGY (Aho, 4-3 L) and Feb. 10 at NJ (Teuvo Teravainen, 3-2 L).
Nicklas Backstrom's empty-net goal on Tuesday was the 12th the Hurricanes have allowed this season, but that number is rather irrelevant since the team is already trailing anyway. The important statistic is that the Canes have converted at a .25 rate (6-for-24) when pulling their goaltender for the extra attacker.\
That's why it's worth it to pull the goaltender every single time and also why you're starting to see teams pull their goaltenders earlier rather than waiting until the final 60 seconds or so.
On the other side of the empty-net equation, the Hurricanes have scored 17 empty-net goals in 15 games this season. When playing with an empty net, opponents have scored just two goals against the Hurricanes: Feb. 7 at BUF (6-5 OTW) and March 9 at NSH (5-3 W).
* Dougie Hamilton's goal on Tuesday in Washington was technically the Canes' seventh this season when playing with an empty net and an extra attacker, but because it's a delayed penalty sequence, I think you have to consider it differently. A freak own goal aside, there is no risk involved for the team pulling it's goaltender; once the opposition touches the puck, the play is dead.*

The improvement that head coach Rod Brind'Amour wants to see out his team following
Tuesday night's 4-1 loss in Washington
is fairly simple: Get back to playing to their identity.
"They were good, and we were not. You put those two together, and we really had no chance in that game. It sort of felt like the whole way that we never got to our game. I give them credit. They played a tight-checking game and took advantage of their opportunities when we took a breath in the D-zone," Brind'Amour said. "We don't have a chance to play against those teams if we play like that. That's just not going to get it done."
Tuesday night's performance was not indicative of the way this team has played, certainly not since the beginning of the calendar year. The Hurricanes weren't aggressive. They didn't skate like they needed to. They didn't generate enough offensively. It just wasn't the level at which they know they're capable of playing.
"We can throw that game out," Brind'Amour said. "We didn't come out with the urgency we needed. We're the desperate team. We've been pushing these guys for so long and hard. You could just see that for whatever reason tonight we didn't have it. We just didn't make any plays. We were firing pucks around and doing things we haven't been doing all year. It wasn't like we gave up a ton, but we didn't get anything going."
The good news? The Canes can course correct against this exact same team on Thursday.

Standings Anxiety is real, but some stats can help ease your worries.
Tuesday night was the worst-case scenario for the Hurricanes in that they lost to the Capitals, while Montreal and Columbus both won. But even with all of that happening, the Canes' playoff odds dropped from 98ish percent to 92-93 percent. It's still a strong mathematical likelihood that the Hurricanes will qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Hurricanes currently occupy the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. For them not to make the playoffs, not only would they have to collapse and fall out of the picture, but both Montreal and Columbus would have to put together near-perfect runs to land above the cut line.
The Hurricanes (six games remaining) can max out at 103 points. Montreal (five games remaining) and Columbus (six games remaining) can each max out at 100 points. So, even if both the Canadiens and Blue Jackets were to win out, they would still need the Hurricanes to miss out on at least three of their 12 available remaining points.
In reality, there's just not that much movement in the standings in such a short period of time. It may be mathematically possible, but the chances aren't all that realistic.
Try not to worry too much. Yes, the Hurricanes need to take care of business, but they remain in control of their destiny. That's a reality they haven't afforded themselves in 10 years.

For the sake of this exercise, we'll consider the potential playoff opponents as the Capitals, Penguins, Islanders or Lightning.
Of those four, the Hurricanes probably match up best against the Islanders. The Lightning are frightening for obvious reasons, even if the Canes have played them close in all three games this season. The Capitals are the defending Stanley Cup champs and have a lot of weapons, as the Canes saw on Tuesday. The Penguins are the Penguins, though the Hurricanes have taken care of business against that team two out of three times so far this season.
That leaves the Islanders. They don't score a lot of goals because they don't need to; they get the first goal and then lock it down. They're well-coached by Barry Trotz, who won the Stanley Cup just a year ago, and they have bought into his system. It wouldn't be an "easy" first-round match-up for the Canes by any stretch, but of the potential opponents, they probably match up best against the Islanders.

The Canes could still jump into the top three in the Metropolitan Division, but it would take a good little run paired with a slide for either Pittsburgh or New York down the stretch of the season. Just one head-to-head match-up remains between these teams - Carolina at Pittsburgh on Sunday, March 31 - which is going to make movement a little more difficult.
It could happen though.
MoneyPuck.com
pegs the Hurricanes' chances of landing the third seed in the division at 21 percent. That's nearly identical to the team's chances of finishing in the second wild card spot (20.6 percent).
As far as clinching scenarios go, if my math is correct, the very earliest the Hurricanes could clinch would be on Sunday. It's probably more realistic for it to happen at some point next week. How cool would it be for the Canes to clinch on April 4 in their home finale? I get chills just thinking about it.
\\*
Join me next week for more questions and more answers in the regular-season finale of Tweetmail!
If you have questions you'd like answered or you're also clenching until the Canes clinch, you can find me on Twitter at
@MSmithCanes
, or you can
drop me an email
.