What has happened to the Hurricanes’ PK unit against the Rangers?

Jon Goyens joined Daily Faceoff Live to discuss the Carolina Hurricanes’ penalty kill unit and how the New York Rangers have forced the league’s No. 1 penalty kill into retreat.

Tyler Yaremchuk: We’re zeroing in on the Hurricanes vs. Rangers series, special teams has defined the first two games of this series and considering Carolina had the No. 1 pk in the regular season, what has happened to this team and allowed for the Rangers to take advantage?

Jon Goyens: It’s crazy, this series is showing two of the best special teams units in the league. Right from the get-go, both in top-3. When you look at the numbers, you wonder if the Rangers’ powerplay is just so elite that it can pick apart the number one PK in the league, a team that defends so well that takes away time and space. Is it poor goaltending? Yeah, that helps, the save percentage on PK is only 70% right now for Freddie Andersen. The Rangers’ powerplay, love their seam passes the one-timers, and an elite net-front presence from Chris Kreider, but the one thing that they have that other teams don’t is two powerplay quarterbacks, they have Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox.

Jon Goyens: Those two can stretch you, they can make you overthink and overextend. If you watch the powerplay from the first period, you see the Rangers form a diamond, they get Carolina to run around and guess where the puck is going. Then you have Fox who is so elite at looking off from his passes, that he can dish those seam passes. Carolina plays great when they play tight, they aren’t getting over-extended, using their sticks and forcing the Rangers to make home plays. But again, it’s how quickly Fox reacts and the Canes can not be letting elite seam passes go to Zibanejad. Then the Canes start to get stretched out, the Ranges get Carolina to have three guys above the top of the circle which creates 2-on-1 in the pocket, Orlov got extended and that created a backdoor pass and another goal. So I’m going to say it, at times the Canes get too hot and horny to be aggressive and at times they get extended away from their diamond and other times unlucky.