Carolina Hurricanes Drowning in Losses Despite Dominant Play

Carolina Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters was asked, after his team's 2-1 loss to New Jersey on Monday night, what the cure is for the Hurricanes' offensive woes.

"That's the million dollar question," he responded.

A witty fan replied to the tweet with "Correction: $7M question"—a reference to Alexander Semin, who has scored just once this season and watched Russian music videos in the press box while sitting out Monday's game with an injury—and indeed, the question should have been corrected.

But not in that way.

The 'Canes don't have an offensive problem. They have a scoring problem.

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

The hometown team's offense pummeled the visiting Devils in essentially every category, including a downright ridiculous 41-16 margin in shots on goal and 94-42 differential in shots attempted (also known as Corsi), yet lost.

The L dropped Carolina's final record on a now-concluded homestand to 1-4, including three consecutive losses with just one goal scored to end the five-game streak.

The 'Canes outshot their opponents in all four losses—34-33 vs. Pittsburgh, 30-28 vs. Washington, 35-22 vs. Detroit and 41-16 vs. New Jersey—and were outshot 33-25 by Nashville in their one win.

Essentially, the Hurricanes have broken the game of hockey.

Gregg Forwerck/Getty Images

The trend has been going on all season long and has made for some particularly frustrating games over the course of the past two months: a 2-0 home loss to San Jose with a 45-19 shot-on-goal differential, a 4-3 home loss to Buffalo with a 70-41 shots-attempted differential, the aforementioned 3-1 home loss to Detroit with a 65-38 shots-attempted differential.

At five-on-five play this year, the dichotomy between Carolina's shots-to-goals conversion rate and its opponents' is stark.

Team	Shots on Goal	Shots Attempted
Hurricanes	6.50%	3.32%
Opponents	9.38%	4.89%

The 'Canes have been outscored 53-39 but have taken more shots (1176-1084) and gotten more shots on goal (600-565), per HockeyAnalysis.com. 

A little math reveals the already-evident disparity: The 'Canes are currently scoring on 6.50 percent of their shots on goal and 3.32 percent of their attempted shots, while their opponents are scoring at rates of 9.38 and 4.89 percent, respectively.

Just in the past seven games, Carolina has lost five times and been outscored (excluding an empty-net goal) 14-10, yet it holds a decisive 221-168 advantage in shots on goal. The non sequitur is visualized below:

Graphic by Mark Jones

What's perhaps most perplexing about the pattern is that it has plagued the franchise for years—ever since Corsi statistics were first tracked in 2007-08. It has survived through parts of four different head coaching tenures, an almost complete roster turnover and the ups and downs of nearly a full decade of 'Canes hockey.

In the eight seasons since, the 'Canes have scored on a lower percentage of both their shots attempted and shots on goal than their opponents in every season but one: 2010-11, when the Hurricanes' 4.04 percent rate in the former category topped their opponents' by a mere 0.02 percent.

Again, the year-by-year difference is visualized below, with the red line representing shots attempted and the blue line representing shots on goal:

Graphic by Mark Jones

Normal hockey teams translate possession into shots into scoring chances into goals.

Carolina, meanwhile, succeeds in generating the first three things, but not so much the fourth.

Why? Even a peewee-level coach could list a variety of reasons: inadequate screening of the goaltender, poor positioning for rebounds, low-percentage shots from long distance or "safe" shot placement toward the netminder's chest area rather than at the corners of the net.

For the problem to have remained elusively present in Raleigh for so long, however, is truly remarkable.

Only two skaters (Eric Staal and Tim Gleason) and zero coaches remain from a 2008-09 squad that, at even strength, took 8.9 percent more shots than its opponents but scored 2.2 percent fewer goals. Yet unbelievably, today's 2014-15 Hurricanes are encountering almost the exact same conundrum.

Gregg Forwerck/Getty Images

The 'Canes have now lost 10 of 13 games since their long-forgotten early November hot streak and are tied with Edmonton for the worst record in the NHL.

Every successive defeat may ever-so-slightly improve their odds at the No. 1 draft pick next June—and the resurrected deity known as Connor McDavid who would come with it—but it also degrades the club's current state even further.

On the bright side, though, the 'Canes are now ninth in the league in shot-attempt differential.

If only that mattered.

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