What Winless October Means for the Carolina Hurricanes and Rest of the NHL

For the first time in franchise history, the Carolina Hurricanes have lost their first eight games in a season.

Friday night, they'll finish a travel-heavy October with zero wins and two points in eight contests.

To describe all that has gone wrong this month—from injuries to almost half of the team's NHL-caliber forwards, to the worst save percentage in the league, to Alexander Semin's ineptitude and Elias Lindholm's invisibility and Ron Hainsey's sluggishness—would surely take all of November.

Here's what first-year general manager Ron Francis told team reporter Michael Smith on Tuesday:

"

We’re in a hole, and we’ve got to stop digging and figure a way to make ourselves better to get out of it. There’s no easy fix. Other teams aren’t going to feel sorry for you and take it easy on you, so you just have to suck it up and fight through it.

"

Indeed, the 'Canes are in a hole. A Grand Canyon-sized hole, one might say, with the Arizona Coyotes rolling into Raleigh Saturday.

The two-point October is a new worst for the 'Canes, historically a slow-starting team to begin with, by a wide margin. Even in 2009-10, when the Hurricanes lost 14 straight games between Oct. 10 and Nov. 15, the team still managed to produce seven points in October.

Graphic by Mark Jones

According to Sports Club Stats, Carolina has a 6.5 percent chance to make the playoffs under the site's "weighted" calculations and a 20.2 percent chance under "50/50" calculations.

Most would likely agree even those projections seem high, given that all seven other Metropolitan Division teams currently sport between eight and 13 points.

The 2014-15 campaign is only 9.8 percent complete, but any reasonable hopes that the team's five-year playoff drought would end this year have been long extinguished.

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However, Carolina's woes could actually be a disguised blessing.

The tantalizing glints of exorbitantly hyped prospects Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, NHL.com's projected top two picks in next June's draft, are already calling to the NHL's bottom-feeding teams.

The Hurricanes' lack of top-four selections in the past half-decade has prevented their mediocrity from translating to future promise, as I explored in a recent column. An absolute failure in 2014-15 could change such a fate.

In fact, the Buffalo Sabres may well be most disappointed by the Hurricanes' winless October. Despite their 2-8-1 record, appalling 1.09 goals-per-game average, 2.9 percent power-play conversion rate and outrageous 104-40 shot deficit in the past three games alone, they "trail" the 'Canes by three points in the "race" for last place.

The 28th-place Coyotes, meanwhile, "trail" by five points.

The 'Canes' unprecedented October of loss after loss has completely disrupted the expected hierarchy of franchises dueling for pole position next June.

Inevitably, some digits will begin to accumulate in Carolina's "W" column.

Eric Staal returned in the last game in Vancouver, and Smith reports that Nathan Gerbe and Patrick Dwyer will return in this weekend's back-to-back, helping the forward corps finally return to near-full health.

Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com indicates the 'Canes also rank only 20th in Corsi percentage. Over a significant period of time, it's virtually impossible that their rather respectable 49.5 Corsi percentage would continue to equate to a 0.0 winning percentage in the standings. Conversely, Buffalo currently sports a league-worst 36.7 Corsi percentage.

A complete turnaround and recovery from the most disastrous month in franchise history, however, seems highly implausible.

For the sake of the future of the franchise, the 'Canes might be best off losing as many games as possible.

Mark Jones has covered the Carolina Hurricanes for Bleacher Report since 2009. Visit his profile to read more, or follow him on Twitter.