Hurricanes Embarrassed By Hungry Sharks Squad

Hurricanes Embarrassed By Hungry Sharks SquadStory by

Ryan HenkelMon, December 8, 2025 at 3:34 AM UTC·10 min read

The Carolina Hurricanes were flat from the drop of the puck Sunday night and things just never got better, resulting in a 4-1 loss at the hands of the San Jose Sharks.

Things didn't didn't look pretty and Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour was candid post-game in what he described as an "embarrassing effort."

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Here are seven takeaways from a fairly uninspiring performance:

'It Was An Embarrassing Effort': Rod Brind'Amour, Jordan Staal, Sean Walker On Loss To Sharks

'It Was An Embarrassing Effort': Rod Brind'Amour, Jordan Staal, Sean Walker On Loss To Sharks Brind'Amour calls the effort "embarrassing," Staal admits they were outworked. Key players candidly dissect the Hurricanes' flat performance against the Sharks.

1. Power Play

Let's at least start on a little bit more of a positive note.

For the second straight game, the Hurricanes found a way to convert on the man advantage.

After scoring twice to open up last night's game against Nashville, it was Jordan Staal tonight who tipped home a Shayne Gostisbehere feed for his first power play goal since 2021.

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The captain has been bumped all the way up to the team's first power play unit to help them win a few more draws and with his large frame, he can provide a good net front as well, which I mean, point and case.

"Everyone here on the team wants to be on the power play," Staal said. "It's a privilege and an honor and I want to contribute. Power play has to be huge for us going down the stretch if we want to make a push for the playoffs."

However, the power play has to be a difference maker in a game, not just a factor.

That third period opportunity is the perfect example.

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The Hurricanes came out for that period with an actually good, sustained push and drew a call just over five minutes in.

You convert there, it's a whole different ballgame, but instead, they squandered the chance.

"We needed one in the third," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour.

So while it's a step in the right direction for the power play, it's still nowhere near consistently good enough.

2. Home Field Disadvantage

For whatever reason, the Canes have been pretty poor at home on this recent home stretch.

They're 3-3-0 in their last six games with each of the losses being essentially duds alongside two blowouts in the win category.

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"It's been frustrating,' Staal said on the poor home performances as of late. "It's been kind of a little more 50/50 hockey and kind of just hoping for an easy game. Not really willing to grind it out and give them nothing and play our style. We have a good thing rolling for a bit, and then we don't. And then we do and then we don't. It's starting to get a little frustrating. Tonight was a game that we should have been ready for. We should have been ready for a hard game and we were not."

The problem goes beyond just the results at home though to be fair, as they've dropped a couple of clunkers on the road too, but playing at home, in front of your home crowd, you'd expect there to be way more juice and energy than the team had Sunday night.

It just feels like the team is lacking a true identity this year and it may still be a while before they find one with the way things have been going.

"We seem to keep having these lulls and I get it, there's a lot of games," Brind'Amour said. "We just have gotten into a little bit of a rut here. But no excuses. They had a good game. Give them credit. They played really hard and they capitalized. We got behind the 8-ball there."

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The amount of injuries that they've had certainly doesn't help, as you can't really tell what kind of team you have without having your full lineup, but it's still concerning how vastly different they can look from game to game at times.

It's obvious the team has grown from the old, dump the puck in, get in on the forecheck and grind the opponent down style, but they aren't showing they can consistently be a deadly rush team or even one that is consistently offensively threatening either.

They still need to figure out what they are and how to best utilize what they have because so far, I'm not sure they really know.

3. Fatigue Starting To Creep In

The players can say what you want about fatigue just being an excuse and how everyone goes through it, but the reality of it all is that this has been a grueling situation for every team in the NHL.

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With the Olympics set to take place in February and with NHL players attending for the first time in over a decade, the schedule had to get condensed to fit every game in while maintaining the same timeline for the playoffs.

Why they chose to do that, I'll never know, but you can see the ramifications of this decision all across the league.

Every team has at least a half dozen or so injuries, and the overall frequency of them throughout the NHL is the highest it's ever been.

The schedule is grueling and when a lot of guys have had to log more and more minutes to account for some of those injuries, such as the guys on the Hurricanes blueline, it takes a toll, both physically and mentally.

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I get that it's the NHL and everyone goes through it, but ignoring the obvious is just silly.

This was definitely one of those games where fatigue impacted the overall results.

But every team has to go through this and what separates great teams from everyone else is finding ways to grind out wins regardless of everything else.

"Everyone is doing it," said defenseman Sean Walker. "It's going to be like that the rest of the year, so you do what you can to get recovery and show up every night ready to work."

"You can make that excuse, but it's the NHL," Staal said. "We get paid to go and we weren't going. It wasn't good enough all throughout the lineup, to a man."

4. Top Line Tapering Off

In the past 10 games, the Hurricanes top line has managed to score just five times at 5v5.

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At even strength in that span, Andrei Svechnikov has only two points, Sebastian Aho just two goals (one of them a breakaway in a blowout), but hey, at least Seth Jarvis is steadily contributing.

Overall though, that type of production just doesn't cut it from your top guys, especially when they're on the ice and in key situations as much as they are.

I mean, they are getting chances, with 60% of the scoring chance share in that 10 game span, but they're just not converting enough.

And to make it worse, they're actually giving up quite a bit too.

They've surrendered four 5v5 goals in the last 10 games and are actually giving up more high-danger chances (19) then they're generating themselves (14).

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Tonight too, I thought they were all just way too careless with the puck and lacked that competitive drive and directness you need to dominate a game.

They weren't the only line that was lacking in that regard, but again, when you're the top dogs, you have to make a difference every night.

5. Analytics

This game was a perfect example of why you can't just rely on some of the most commonly used public data points when talking about games and players and whatnot either.

According to naturalstattrick.com, the Hurricanes had a 62.38% edge over the Sharks in terms of the expected goals share.

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In fact, only five players had an expected goal percentage below 50% and 11 had higher than 60%, with six of those being even higher than 70%.

Moneypuck.com's "Deserve to Win O'Meter" also heavily favored Carolina, with the Canes winning 64.6% of the time in 1,000 game simulations from the data collected.

Personally, I'm a big proponent of analytics because it can help give you deeper and better information on a game when you use it to aid in your analysis, but you can't just take those numbers for gospel.

Because that was just simply put a horrible game by Carolina and you'd never think that was the case looking at just those numbers.

6. A New Goaltending Tandem

I really liked the way Pyotr Kochetkov played tonight.

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You really can't fault him on any of the three goals he saw go past him and he honestly made this game not turn into an absolute blowout with a few really good saves.

That wasn't the easiest way to get eased back into lineup after missing eight games with a lower-body injury, but he battled hard and was really active especially below the goal line, helping to facilitate d-zone breakouts.

At this point, with the way Brandon Bussi has been playing, I'd just stick with him and Kochetkov moving forward.

While I don't think Frederik Andersen has been as bad as the results and some of the fanbase might think, the results are what they are and he just hasn't been able to come up with a win in over a month.

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I think you should just ride the hot hands for a bit, especially with the team still not really having found an identity yet.

7. Can Jaccob Slavin Be The Great Equalizer?

I'm curious to see just how much of a calming effect a healthy Jaccob Slavin can have on this team.

Because when he's playing, things are just different.

For one, he'd probably help cut down on the amount of high-danger chances the Hurricanes are surrendering and that'd probably have a ripple effect on things such as Andersen's play and just overall not having to chase games as often.

His return would also allow the team to properly slot the rest of their defensemen.

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And while, yes, he is known for his defensive prowess, Slavin is also one of the league's best in terms of tilting the ice.

Year in and year out, Slavin leads the league in terms of chance generation and his two-way game is a big part of Carolina's success.

He's an elite player and not having had one of those in the lineup for 26 games has certainly had an effect.

Hurricanes Embarrassed By Hungry Sharks Squad

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