How much longer is this going to last? How much longer is Ron Francis, general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes, going to wait before shaking some life into his team? How much longer before the organization admits that the current construct of the team on the ice isn’t going to suddenly become more dynamic?

We're a dozen games into the 2017-2018 season and the Hurricanes are already in the danger zone.

So, what is Francis willing, or able, to do? Is it a trade? Is it a reshuffling of the line up? Is it a coaching change? All things have to be on his desk as the team heads home for Tuesday’s game with Florida. The Hurricanes will play seven of their next 10 on home ice and will be looking to win at PNC Arena for the first time in a month.

Saturday night’s 2-1 loss at Arizona, to a Coyotes team that came into the night 1-12-1 on the season and without a win at home, was really the most Carolina Hurricanes thing ever. Outshoot your opponent (the 10th time that’s happened already this year), have oodles of chances to score (including a Jeff Skinner penalty shot in the 2nd period) and fall in a shootout.

Man, what’s more prototypical Hurricanes hockey than losing the skills competition?

That Carolina salvaged a point on a late third period goal by Jordan Staal is NOT a consolation, it’s embarrassing. The Hurricanes were not better than Arizona tonight. The Coyotes has just one win — sorry, now two wins — for a reason, and the Canes couldn’t find enough of their game to take advantage.

After a 2-1 win at Calgary — in which the Canes probably played exactly the way head coach Bill Peters designed — Carolina was 3-1-1 and appeared off to the kind of start they needed to this season. Since then, they’ve lost six of their last seven and are a total mess in every phase of the game.

They’re last in the Metropolitan Division, and they’re getting worse.

We could spend all day poring over statistics, the sad state of the power play, the surprising struggles of the penalty kill, the fact that Sebastian Aho is still without a goal into the season’s second month, but those aren’t necessarily the reasons for the team’s current predicament.

You couldn’t pull a pin out of the Hurricanes with a Mack Truck. This team plays tight, they struggle to handle the puck, they lack decisiveness in the offensive zone and their roster and line up choices have been curious.

Francis and company took a chance that the center position would be good enough to compete at a playoff level. They banked on Jordan Staal, Victor Rask, Derek Ryan and Marcus Kruger being good enough. They guessed wrong. Staal is a very good player, and he’s played well, but he’s not a top-line offensive player. Kruger is an outstanding asset on the penalty kill, wins face offs and can lead your energy line.

Rask is an average skater, plays with no physicality and is more often than not invisible on the ice these days. I won’t even mention that he’s in the second year of a 6-year contract that pays him $4 million annually. Ryan’s story is great – a journeyman who established himself as a capable NHL player a year ago at age 30 and earned a contract for this season. But neither is playing like a number two center and one of them is filling that role. Neither is playing like a number three center and the OTHER one is filling THAT role.

Yet somehow, with Aho and Elias Lindholm each on the roster, and each capable of playing the middle, the team has stayed with the status quo. Francis told me last week that they didn’t think Aho was ready to be a center just yet. Well, how do you know? Lindholm played the position pretty well when asked last year, but Peters likes him more on the wing.

OK, I’ll bow to their expertise.

What happened with Martin Necas, the 12th pick in the June draft who was so impressive during the preseason that he made the team? Why did he watch all but 6:54 of his 5-game cup of NHL cappuccino? That Necas sat and watched was a monumental waste of time. That Janne Kuokkanen made the team and was a healthy scratch as often as he played is ridiculous. That Peters opts to start as many as five players ideally suited for the energy line duty is baffling.

But day after day, shift after shift, this is the same team, and it’s silly to expect drastically different results. It’s like Peters is sitting on a lead that he doesn’t have.

Bill Peters blew the leadership situation in spectacular fashion. Not only did Justin Williams, maybe the easiest choice ever to be this team’s captain, NOT get that honor, he wasn’t even named an alternate. How in the hell is that possible?

And was it really so hard to choose ONE captain? Apparently so, because Peters named TWO. Staal, who didn’t want that burden a year ago, and Justin Faulk, who’s yet to play anywhere near his All-Star level, are sharing the responsibility.

Did those screwball decisions cost the Canes during this dozen game stretch? Who knows, but if you think about it long enough you have to come to the conclusion that, as a head coach, Peters is a play-it-safe guy.

That’s why Necas played less than seven minutes in the five games he was on the roster. That’s why Roland McKeown, who played pretty well in his NHL debut in Arizona, didn’t see the ice in the third period. That’s why Janne Kuokkanen is back in Charlotte and not playing in Raleigh.

This team needs scoring, right? Well, Valentin Zykov and Warren Foegele have a combined 13 goals for the Checkers though 11 games, maybe someone wants to break off a phone call. But that would just be a waste of time, because if Bill Peters loses trust in a player, he buries him. That’s why Jeff Skinner didn’t play the final 4:48 PLUS the overtime in last Sunday’s loss to Anaheim. Even though Jeff has seven goals this year and 44 dating back to last, Peters kept his best goal-scorer on the bench during a stretch where he should have been trying to win the game.

In fairness, many of the Hurricanes’ key players have yet to consistently contribute. The goaltending has been average at best. Faulk and Noah Hanifin have been suboptimal. Aho hasn’t scored a goal yet. But there’s got to be a reason beyond bad luck as to why all of these things have conspired to have the Hurricanes at 11 points through 12 games.

I don’t have that answer, but I know the question that’s coming fast. Is Bill Peters the right coach for a team that was positive it was ready to take the next step? If pressed today, I’d say no, he isn’t.

How much longer can Francis wait before he looks in the mirror and wonders?