Dom Luszc-whatever from The Athletic had a few Canes notes in his 16 Stats column this week. Basically, if you want me to back up my feelings about their lack of depth scoring and general offensive production/luck this season ... you can just read about it there. Here's a couple of snippets:
"Interestingly, the Panthers aren’t even the most unlucky contender at the moment. That would be
Carolina who has nearly the same expected goal differential as
Boston (plus-24 compared to Boston’s plus-25), but a chasm in actual results (plus-2 compared to plus-43). Thank God for sequencing luck, which is giving Carolina a record much better than it currently deserves."
"This year, the problem is all on the offensive side though where the team is minus-13 in goals scored above expected at five-on-five and minus-10 on the power play. This time around, it’s not the team’s top guys where there’s some concern, it’s the team’s depth."
He goes on to note that Carolina's top three scoring forwards (Svech, Aho, Necas) are carrying a wildly disproportionate amount of the load, and are producing higher than the stats predict. Meanwhile the entire rest of the roster is combining to score nearly 30 goals less than expected based on quality of opportunities. Bottom line ... frustration.