NHL Offseason Check-In: The Hurricanes Aren't Even Close

With coaching changes come system changes, identity changes, and, most importantly, personnel changes. The Carolina Hurricanes, who have made the playoffs just once since their 2006 Stanley Cup Final win, continued their offseason of change on Thursday when GM Ron Francis announced the hiring of Bill Peters. The change won't mean a thing unless their blue line and goaltending situation follows course and undergoes a transformation of its own.

Peters was ostensibly brought in for his defensive aptitude. As an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings the past three seasons, he worked extensively on the defensive aspects of the game, including penalty killing. The Hurricanes gave up the 19th most goals in the league last season (only the Philadelphia Flyers allowed more goals and still made the playoffs). The team's defensive shortcomings shouldn't fall solely on the head of now-axed head coach Kirk Muller, but after another disappointing season, it was easy to pick a fall guy.

In hiring Peters, the Hurricanes are bringing a fresh voice into the locker room and attempting to right the ship. Sometimes coaching changes are just what a team needs—just ask the New York Rangers. After firing the reasonably successful John Tortorella, first-year coach Alain Vigneault lead to team to its first Stanley Cup Final in 20 years. Changing coaches in the NHL is like changing pants, they have to be swapped out for a new pair just often enough to keep things fresh. But this change alone won't be enough for the Hurricanes. The team needs a bit of an overhaul, too.

First, they need to address their defensive corps. Justin Falk is the bright spot on this team, putting up impressive point totals and a strong shot attempt differential, all while facing some of the top lines in the league every night. Ryan Murphy is a young talent with plenty of upside but, as far as NHL defenseman go, he's still wet behind the ears. His season was marred by inconsistency, despite sheltered zone starts and easy competition. It's what comes after those two that's the biggest problem for the Hurricanes.

Other than their two young defenseman, the Hurricanes iced a spattering of veterans defenseman, who were not overly impressive. Ron Hainsey has always been an underrated defenseman as far as the stay-at-home concept goes, but progressing the play is not his strong suit. Plus, he's an unrestricted free agent, so there's no guarantee he'll be back.

Andrej Sekera is another underrated player, bringing strong possession numbers and offensive ability. But here's the problem: Sekera joins Falk, Murphy, John Michael Liles, and Jay Harrison as the only defenseman signed next season. Liles was pretty awful last year, splitting time between the Maple Leafs and the Hurricanes and Murphy's bound to experience some growing pains during an 82-game trudge. That really leaves Falk and Sekera as your top options, with no great depth.

"[Sekera] played great this year, " Falk said at the end of the season in a video posted at the team's website. "It was nice playing alongside him. We move the puck pretty well together and support each other."

The Hurricanes will enter the offseason with an estimated $18 million in cap space and will have to use a lot of it to fill out their roster. They'll be wise need to look at some players who may be undervalued like Anton Stralman or Tom Gilbert to strengthen the back end of their defense. Peters and Francis have their work cut out for them on the defensive end.

The real problem, however, is Cam Ward. The man who called the crease home for the past nine years is a middle of the pack goalie who gets paid like a star while not shining like one. If anything, he's that star that's really far away, buried behind nebulas and galaxies and a bunch of other astronomy stuff and you have to go to some weird valley in Pennsylvania in order to maybe see it clearly once every 30 years.

Of the goaltenders that played more than 5,000 minutes over the past seven years, Ward ranks 25th in even-strength save percentage. He's still cashing in on his rookie campaign, where he strung together some memorable performances en route to bringing the Stanley Cup to the Raleigh. Last year, his 91.5% even-strength save percentage was an albatross around the team's neck—out of the 55 goalies that played more than 1,000 minutes, he was 44th in the league in that category.

The solution in net is a very simple one for Carolina, if the front office is willing: Anton Khudobin. On that same list of 55 goalies, Khudobin was ranked fifth, 39 spots ahead of his teammate. Khudobin played more minutes last year than Ward and will need to do the same moving forward if the team has any hope of competing. But, as long as Ward is there, anecdotal memory will dictate his starts. It may have been nearly a decade ago that he took his team to the Stanley Cup Final off a markedly great performance, but that past needs to be the past if the Hurricanes are to have a future.

"You have to just go and show your best game," Khudobin said, about splitting duties with Ward during the 2013-14 season. He acknowledged that it's ultimately the coach's decision and he and Ward both need to just show the coaches their best.

In Ward's defense, he saw decreased playing time last season due to multiple injuries, so the organization could be hoping that a fully healthy Ward can make an impact as a number one goaltender, recent trends in his play notwithstanding.

"Personally for myself, i just struggled to get comfortable all season long," Ward said at the team's break up day, citing the injuries and inconsistent work of the past year.

With questions in net and on the blue line, Peters will certainly have plenty of tough decisions to make once the season gets underway, but for now, all of the pieces on the chessboard need to be arranged, before they can even start to come up with a plan of attack.