News out of Lethbridge today has the Hurricanes sending a pair of 19 year old forwards - Sam McKechnie and Jaimen Yakubowski - home to await trades. Apparently both players had requested trades and it looks like the team intends to oblige them.
Yakubowski and McKechnie were the team's two leading goalscorers last year, Yakubowski with 32 goals and McKechnie with 26, and were 2nd and 3rd respectively in team overall points. This year though, the two each had only one goal - Yakubowski with 1g, 0a in 11 games and McKechnie with 1g, 2a in 9 games.
It's unusual to see that kind of regression in points, especially from 19 year olds. It also makes you wonder what the Hurricanes might be able to get in return for these guys. The most likely culprit for the drop-off in these players' production is that the team has a new coach this year and perhaps these players are being used differently than they were last year....that would also explain the trade requests too obviously, if the players were clashing with coach Drake Berehowsky. Any team acquiring these players would need to keep these things in mind.
All this only further underscores the mess that the Hurricanes organization has become though....they are 1-9-1, have an offence that is generating a league 2nd-worst 2.0 goals per game on average (only Vancouver's 1.9 is worse), been outscored 56-22 in 11 games, and are giving up an average of 41.8 shots against per game.
The organization has missed the playoffs for four straight years (although past coach/GM Rich Preston was at the helm for all four years, never once making the playoffs) and have gotten the high draft picks that come with that, but are apparently still no closer to returning to the playoffs than they were four years ago. It's early yet of course but a 1-9-1 record and that 40+ shots per game suggests there's a significant mountain to be climbed if they are to turn things around and make the playoffs this year.
Anyways, given that Berehowsky has (I'm assuming) already alienated two of his teams' best veterans and doesn't have better results than last year to prove that his approach is a better way, how long before it's fair to question the wisdom of his hiring? At the time he was hired this summer, many pointed out that Berehowsky's coaching resume was a little thin - only one year as a head coach, last year in the ECHL (his team missed the playoffs) and five years as an assistant, only two at the junior level (in the OHL).
It's a mess.
