While the Carolina Hurricanes season ended in disappointment, the team had a lot to be proud of. Now in the offseason, tough decisions will be made, and management will work to put the team in a place to succeed next season. In the meantime, we will take a look back at individual players’ seasons and see how they did. For the Carolina Hurricanes offseason grades, today we look at Teuvo Teravainen.
Carolina Hurricanes Offseason Grade: Teuvo Teravainen
Teuvo Teravainen has been one of the core pieces responsible for the resurgence of the Hurricanes in the last five years. The former first-round pick of the Chicago Blackhawks is a very skilled top-six winger who is known for his playmaking ability and two-way responsibility. While typically seen as a playmaker, Teravainen has a deceptively good shot. He leans towards passing first but when he decides to shoot it can be deadly.
After he won a Stanley Cup with the Blackhawks, Carolina acquired Teravainen in 2016 in exchange for draft picks in what was a cap dump move for Chicago. It turned out to be a good move for Carolina. He is part of the large group of Finnish players Carolina has slowly acquired over the last few years. While he deserves much credit as a key piece of Carolina’s core, this season was tough for Teravainen.
Teuvo Teravainen’s Regular Season
The regular season for Teravainen was a bit of a struggle. He struggled with injuries all season and unfortunately lost his grandfather. While there is no certainty to this, all of it seemed to affect his play. In 68 games played, he scored 12 goals and 25 assists. This included five powerplay goals and two shorthanded goals as he was utilized in all situations. Notably, he and Sebastian Aho make a good pairing at the top of the penalty kill and that was evident many times this season. His 37 points this year, however, were a decent drop from his consistent 60-ish point performances over the last few years. For example, in the 2019-20 season, Teravainen also played 68 games but had 63 points. His goal totals were similar, but his assists were almost double.
Most of Teravainen’s season was spent playing on the top line with Aho and Seth Jarvis. That line had 17.7 expected goals for and 15 goals for. Individually, Teravainen had 12.3 expected goals compared to his 12 actual goals scored. So generally speaking, Teravainen was producing what his play was projecting. However, Carolina was looking for Teravainen to produce closer to his previous seasons and he simply did not. Again, there were unfortunate reasons likely for this, but regardless it was a down year.
Teuvo Teravainen’s Playoffs
When the playoffs started Teravainen was ready to go, but that was quickly derailed due to an injury in Game 2 of the First Round against the New York Islanders. Teravainen took a shot and Islanders forward Jean-Gabriel Pageau slashed him in the wrist. As a result of that slash, Teravainen left the game with a broken wrist. He then sat out the remainder of the First Round and the whole Second Round only to return in the Eastern Conference Finals. Much like his regular season, the playoffs were a struggle for Teravainen as well much due to unfortunate luck.
Teravainen only played in six games for Carolina in the postseason. Over that span, he had a career-low one playoff goal and point. Carolina had their biggest offensive explosion in the Second Round so it’s not surprising that his points reflected missing that round. But for Teravainen, his points total was still very low. He just couldn’t seem to get much going this entire year and the broken wrist threw him off in the playoffs as well. Much like the regular season, his expected goals and actual goals were the same. He was at one for both. Overall, these playoffs were ones to forget for Teravainen.
The Verdict
This entire year was just a tough one for Teravainen. He still put up some ok numbers, but not really for his standards based on expectations and historical performance. Given Carolina’s current win-now window, having peak performance Teravainen is almost essential. Unfortunately, for both parties, that just wasn’t the case this year. With that said, this seemed to be more of a fluke for Teravainen than a showing of a progressive downturn. We can never predict the future, but this writer expects Teravainen to come back next season and be closer to where he performed before.
And speaking of future seasons, Teravainen will join the list of Hurricanes players needing a new contract after next year. Again, with Carolina looking to step forward next year, this could lead to Teravainen being included as a trade piece. Ideally, Carolina would like to keep him and add some pieces around Teravainen’s playmaking, but to get value you have to give value. And Teravainen may have some value, even with his down year. The year was just an unfortunate one with some bad luck for Teravainen.
Grade: C-
Check out the last Carolina Hurricanes offseason grades article!
Main Photo: James Guillory-USA TODAY Sports
