NHL playoffs: Hurricanes show limitations of trying to contain hockey's chaos

On paper, it looks the Carolina Hurricanes are firing on all cylinders in the Eastern Conference final.

The Metropolitan Division winners have 56.72% of the shot attempts in the series, 58.92% of the expected goals, and 54.95% of the high-danger chances. They outshot the Florida Panthers 32-17 in Game 3.

Carolina is doing what it always does, which is control the flow of games.

Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, though, they are also down 0-3 to the Panthers, one loss away from the conclusion of their 2022-23 campaign. Carolina has lost 11 conference final games in a row — and despite winning seven playoff rounds in the last five seasons, the team is likely to head home empty-handed once again.

Since Rod Brind'Amour became the coach of the team in 2018, it has consistently been praised for its defensive acumen, hard-working style, and ability to tilt the ice in its favor. Not only do the Hurricanes have the seventh-most points in the regular season in the Brind'Amour era, they have consistently dominated the play at 5-on-5 since 2018-19.

During that time, the Hurricanes have been solid on special teams, too. Their penalty kill has been the best in the NHL (84.7%) while their power play's 21.1% success rate ranks a solid 13th.

It's fair to describe Carolina as a model franchise over the last half decade under Brind'Amour's stewardship. This group does everything you're supposed to do to win games at the NHL level.

The most consistent criticism of the Hurricanes has been a lack of blue-chip offensive players, and there's no doubt that the absence of Max Pacioretty and Andrei Svechnikov has been felt in these playoffs. It's also possible that Sebastian Aho is miscast as a championship-level team's offensive centrepiece.

Despite that nitpick, there's no denying how good and difficult to play the Hurricanes are.

You could make an argument that this team's lack of elite finishers makes it fatally flawed, but blue-collar groups like the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues and the 2013-14 Los Angeles Kings have hoisted the Stanley Cup in the last decade.

A better explanation — albeit a less satisfying one — for Carolina's inability to get over the hump is that they are victims of the chaos intrinsically bound to the game of hockey — even at its highest level.

While the conventional wisdom states that the best way to consistently win games is to control the play, limit opportunities for your opponents and put pucks on net, that can only get you so far. A team like the Hurricanes, that has a reputation for dominating the puck-possession battle, is usually only getting 55% or so of the available scoring chances.

Over the the course of a season, that consistently results in a solid record. In a short playoff series, that edge isn't nearly enough to guarantee victory, or even come close to it. If any team can bend the math in their favour, it's these Hurricanes, but they can only bend it so much.

Right now, they've run into a goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky who has been otherworldly since the beginning of the second round, posting a .958 save percentage in his last eight games. There's simply not much you can do about that.

It's possible that the Hurricanes mount an incredible comeback from here, and the high quality of hockey this team plays will shine through on the way to a Stanley Cup Final berth. For that to happen, though, they'll need the puck to normalize and the better team to win four consecutive times.

Unfortunately for Carolina, that's not really how the NHL works.