Workrate Hockey - April 21, 2026

I'm not going to make a big thing out of this. When you're a writer, especially a writer whose livelihood doesn't depend on his writing, sometimes you fall off. That happens, and has been happening to me ever since the Olympic break, when I kind of took a step away because there wasn't anything to write about, then I found myself having more and more difficulty getting back to writing on a regular schedule. That's on me. But, we're going to try to make up for it. The playoffs are coming, everything's going to be more ramped up as the weeks go by, so let's try to get back on the horse.

That's it. Let's roll.

Last week, the Carolina Hurricanes clinched the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference, ensuring them home ice through at least the Eastern Conference Finals, and even the Stanley Cup Finals if they play any team other than Colorado (who won the President's Trophy, so they're not making it there). Interestingly, it's the first time the Hurricanes have had the best record in the Eastern Conference in history. The Canes/Whalers have won their division 8 times (86-87, 98-99, 01-02, 05-06, 20-21, 21-22, 22-23, 25-26), but each time there was a team in their conference that finished with more points than them. Not this season.

[In the 2020-21 season, the Hurricanes finished with 80 points, which was the most points in three of the four divisions, only behind Colorado and Vegas in the West who both had 82, so in a way that was like winning a conference, but since this was pandemic hockey, there were no conferences, and the Canes will have to settle for their 2020-21 Discover NHL® Central Division banner.]

There's 7 players who scored 20 or more goals this season, which is the most the Hurricanes have ever had in a season, and only second to the 1986-87 Whalers in franchise history. The 86-87 Whalers had 8 20 goal scorers, which sounds impressive until you remember this was 80s hockey when goalies kind of just stood there, had a .878 save percentage league-wide, and the league had 17 40-goal scorers. Oh, right, and that Gretzky guy had 183 points. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-THREE. The Canes had three 20-goal scorers last season, one of whom was Jack Roslovic, whom I was told by some people that the franchise was foolish to let him go because the team "needs goalscorers'. (In Roslovic's defense, he'd end up signing with Edmonton and put up similar numbers there, so go off my dude.)

The thing that's wild about the Hurricanes this season is who those goals are coming from. Aho and Jarvis, with 59 goals between them, was to be expected. But Andrei Svechnikov putting on his big boy pants and hitting career highs in goals and points was a reminder of what Svech - when healthy - can actually do. Jordan Staal - JORDAN STAAL - scored 20 goals at age 37. He's only scored 20 goals once before in the 14 seasons he's played for the Hurricanes, back in 2015-16 where someone needed to score for the Hurricanes. This was "double digit goal scorer Joakim Nordstrom" times. It was a bad time for the empire.

Nik Ehlers has looked like the player the Canes expected when they brought him in. Taylor Hall's chipped in nearly 50 points despite limited minutes. Alexander Nikishin has 11 goals. Logan Stankoven has been on a roll lately, and put himself at the 20 goal level. The offense is clicking at the right time. I say "right time" because the goaltending is back to "scary" level. Brandon Bussi isn't necessarily a pumpkin, but he is some kind of gourd. He had a bit of a rough stretch, but has kind of leveled off in recent games. Freddy Andersen is all over the place.

When I did the whole "Is Freddy Back" post back at the end of January, I mentioned what I thought was a stretch of seven games after being (possibly) concussed in the November 11th game against the Capitals where he was absolute dogshit. Since those games, he's been 11-5-3 with a 2.80 goals against average and a .882 save percentage. If you want to cherry pick to the first time I raised my eyebrow and thought "maybe he's back" (January 17th, a 29/30 save performance in a 4-1 win over Jersey), the goals against drops down to 2.70, and the save percentage bumps to .888 - which I know, isn't mindblowing, but save percentage is a weird statistic when it comes to the Hurricanes, since they give up so few shots, but often the shots that they do give up end up being higher quality chances, even if not literally defined as a "high danger shot", because of the suffocating pressure that the Canes put on opposing teams.

Sit down though - through his last 10 regular season games (7-3-0, 2.80 GAA, .878 sv%), Frederik Anderson has been better than league average - regardless of what the statistics might show. During those games, he's saved 4.3 goals above expected - that's good for 11th in the league, and better than goaltenders like Jake Oettinger and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Andersen, who will probably get the start in Game 1 (EDIT: he did), will need to keep up a pace like this, and if he does, that will keep the Canes competitive throughout the playoffs.

[Yes, I did write 95% of this before Game 1, but wasn't about to punt it because my brain got overwhelmed.]

[Another note - there will be a full writeup on Games 1 and 2 later, but I wanted to get this out because there's been a lot on my mind and this sitting in my drafts isn't helping.]

A lot/some/a few of you might know that my kid plays travel hockey. He just wrapped up his sixth season of travel - three for the Raleigh Raptors, and three before that for the Carolina Junior Canes. Before that, he played three seasons of house league, as one does while you learn how to play and establish your skills. I was 100% behind my kid playing hockey, but I had reservations over this reputation that while youth sports is, as a whole, a shitshow, ice hockey was its own special type of hell. Hockey, more than almost any other sport, has a huge income barrier to play - between gear and ice time - so the players that play (and moreso, the parents that fund those players), tend to be a certain "higher income" type that I have spent the majority of my life just having a disdain for. Maybe it comes from me being raised in a farming area quickly being bought out by the uberrich that ensured that I would never be able to raise my kids in the area 11 generations before me raised their kids. Call me bitter. It's cool.

So, anyway, my kid is 9 years old at the time, and he's joining his first ever house league team. He's excited - I'm all of the emotions. I'm ready to watch games by myself (OK, with my wife), and not talk to any of these hockey parents who are going to be talking about estates and overseas travel and how to oppress minorities and whatever trust fund people talk about. Like, I'm not having any of it. I'm just here to watch my kid hopefully not embarrass himself. Yet, one of the dads comes over to me and starts making small talk, and is friendly enough, then says "I know you from the Internet."

Oh, shit. How the hell am I going to talk my way out of this one?

"Yeah, I know you from Twitter. You're Mr. Workrate."

Again, keep in mind, this is 2017. We are getting ready to enter our fourth and final season of a head coach who punches his foreign players in the back of the head. We had just experienced a season that saw Ty Rattie, Martin Frk, and Jakub Nakladal in Hurricanes sweaters. We spent a lot of time on Twitter talking our way through it. Section 328 was in full swing. It was fun (well, the hockey, notsomuch.) That said, you never know how people are going to interpret you based off of social media interaction. I'm not the same guy I am online (I'm much more entertaining behind a keyboard.) But the interaction was good - he enjoyed my writing, I enjoyed that he enjoyed my writing, we made similar stupid references, and we got along well. It helped that our kids got along.

That was Travis Crane. We lost Travis April 9th, after a three and a half year long battle with cancer that he fought with all his might.

I loved spending time with Travis and his wife Je'Lynn - two of the kindest people you ever wanted to meet. It was incredibly frustrating that our paths would get so close, but as is the case with youth hockey, the circles get close, but they never seemed to Cross. Whether it be the age (his son Carson was a year older than mine) or organizations (we were Junior Canes, he was a Raleigh Raptor - when we went to the Raptors, they went to the Canes) or hockey politics (another time for that one), I never got to be a hockey dad on the same team as Travis again, but we'd see each other often at the rink, where he'd be showing off some custom made Air Force Ones in Raptor colors (we were both sneakerheads). Travis got into doing play-by-play for his son's team as they'd record the games for their families - a concept I'd later crib from him these last two seasons my son played. When I would do commentary, there was a part of my mind that would always think back to Travis doing it and thinking how well he did it on the fly and how much fun he was having. I wanted to be like that.

We ran into the family unexpectedly at the Canes Stadium Series game, and I we were so excited to see them. Travis was fighting like a champ at this point but he was having a bit of a struggle, but in that moment it felt like old times. We ran into each other a few more times, the last time being maybe a year ago, where we got to talk. It was great talking to him again.

Hug your friends. Grab dinner. Send them a DM. Say goodbye. Do something.