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Carolina Hurricanes Game Day Preview: @NYI - Can Canes extend run?

January 4, 2014, 12:13 AM ET [4 Comments]
Matt Karash
Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Carolina Hurricanes finished 2013 with a wild New Year’s Eve party type of win and then followed it up by starting 2014 with a win in Washington. Here is hoping that this upswing on the rollercoaster is long-lived.

Saturday’s opponent is the New York Islanders. But this is not your October/November slumping and meek Islanders. The team is playing better of late and gradually closing ground on the herd in the Metro fighting for 2nd and 3rd place in the Metro Division. The Canes have their own place in the standings to worry about most, but moving up by stepping on the head of the Islanders and holding them down would be doubly good. But what of this improved team? The Isles were nearly left for dead after an 0-8-2 stretch between late November and early December, but between no one else winning consistently in the Metro either and the Isles 6-3-2 run since then, the Isles could pull to within 4 points of the Canes with a win in Saturday’s contest. Most recently the Isles have won 3 straight. What is more impressive is the 3 wins are over a decent Minnesota team followed by consecutive wins against the 2013 Stanley Cup finalists Boston and Chicago.

Shorter version: Despite being in last place in the division, the Isles come in playing good hockey.

The Islanders struggles early in the season were primarily on the defensive side of the puck including both defense and goaltending. It is not so much that these problems have been eliminated, but more so that the offense finally kicked into gear. The Isles come in 29th in the NHL in goals against and 30th in penalty kill. The Isles’ offensive rankings are middle of the pack but have been better than that of late.

Shorter version: With the Canes offense (also named Jeff Skinner) clicking and the defense being a bit loose of late, this game has the potential for a bunch of fire wagon hockey up and down the ice.

The Carolina Hurricanes come in trending positive in their last 4 periods. The team was horrible in the couple games coming into the New Year’s Eve game against Montreal. It was not so much that they did not carry play. The Canes actually played 55ish minutes of pretty good hockey in the previous losses and would have won if hockey games were scored like boxing matches with a point awarded to either team for each minute. But the tendency to make far too many bad mistakes at key times and then back it up with weak goaltending that killed the 2012-13 season reared its ugly head. The Montreal game featured another 2 periods of this mess followed by a miraculous 3rd period that ultimately led to an overtime win. The Washington game was strange in that it saw the Canes get outshot and mostly outplayed for much of the game, but the team fared better because it played closer to its October 2013 brand of hockey that defended the front of the net and mostly avoided defensive coverage breakdowns when it was hemmed in a bit.

So the hope is that the Islanders game will keep the surging offense (also named Jeff Skinner) and take another step toward regaining the defensive acumen that was the foundation of most of the Canes’ wins early in the season. The point at which the Canes get both of these things at the same time is the point where it rises above the treading water/mediocrity and becomes a playoff bound hockey team.

Keys to the game:

1) Match intensity and physicality. When the Islanders are playing well (which they are right now) 1 of the things they do as well as anyone is just get after it. It can be the puck, an opponent with the puck, where the puck is going to be, etc. The Isles skate and work hard. Opponents who cannot match this find themselves playing a ton of defense and playing a ton hemmed in their own end.

2) Go for it offensively. If you skate and force the issue, there are goals to be had against an Islanders team that is below average defensively. Unlike the past couple games, this is also a game in which a decent helping of special teams play could be to the Canes benefit if the power play can keep improving. As noted above the Isles rank dead last in the league shorthanded.

3) Hainsey/Bellemore vs. Tavares' line. John Tavares comes in red hot (also known as slightly cooler than Jeff Skinner). With the Isles dictating matchups some at home, I would guess they will steer Tavares’ line away from Sekera/Faulk which puts Hainsey/Bellemore in the line of fire. They spent much of Thursday with Ovechkin flying at them and managed a decent game. I thought Bellemore was the Canes best defender. Hainsey had a strange game in that he was a direct part of 2 goals against, but the simple plus/minus stat misses the mark a bit. He actually played Ovechkin pretty well 1-on-1 off the rush only to have Ovechkin’s shot glance off his stick and right into the upper right corner of 1 of those shooting drill cutouts. Another goal saw him go down in the crease and sort of create a mess for Khudobin that resulted in a bad angle goal that looked like it also deflected off him. So if he gets a bigger piece of either of those 2 pucks, he ranks right up there with Bellemore. The point is that despite being on the wrong end of a couple plays Thursday there was nothing broken about Hainsey’s play overall.

It will also be interesting to see what, if anything, Muller does matching forward lines with his defense pairings. Might he try to get JStaal’s line with Hainsey/Bellemore, so that Capuano has to pick his poison between facing the team’s best checking line (JStaal’s line) or its top D pairing (Sekera/Faulk)? And will Muller be able to get Liles/Murphy enough minutes without matchup issues? If the matchup works out differently, the challenge is still the same - keep Tavares' line under reasonable control.

To keep positive momentum from stalling out, the Canes need to get at least 2 if not 3 or 4 points in the back-to-back this weekend (2nd game at home versus Nashville on Sunday). It is obviously easier if you collect 2 points in the 1st game. Fingers crossed that the Canes are getting ready to hit a groove and tear through a winnable January schedule.

Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63

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