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Canes Game #4: Decent point earned |
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You hate to get 1 point in a game that you are winning in the 3rd period, but overall I think you have to be very happy with the OTL point that the Canes earned in a shootout loss against the Rangers on Thursday night. Minus Jordan Staal - minus Eric Staal - minus Andrej Sekera - minus Jeff Skinner - and plus a bunch of AHL call-ups, the Canes battled hard, played a decent game and got solid goaltending to earn a point. You take it and move forward. And with 4 days off before the next game, the lineup has a very good chance to re-add Sekera and Skinner and maybe even get an EStaal surprise.
Notes on the game:
Leaning optimism at 5pm I through out the following on Twitter:
There were many contributors in the Canes win but at the end of the day I think my last tweet called it best. I would not say that Khudobin was totally on. His rebound control was not great all night, but the Canes defense did an incredible job being 1st to the crease after Khudobin made the 1st save. And the Canes defense did a good job avoiding the horrible kind of breakdown and gave Khudobin a chance.
A few quick notes:
1) Penalty kill. The unit which has struggled so far this year was perfect tonight when the team needed it.
2) A tale of 2 Faulks. He was good skating backwards playing defense without the puck. At the same time, he struggled mightily with the puck on his stick moving forward. The worst of it was when he turned the puck over twice to Rick Nash on the same shift in the 3rd period to go with a couple other turnovers. He had this problem at times last year. I also think it gets spotlighted a bit minus Andrej Sekera who does the heavy lifting moving the puck up the ice. The common symptom is that he just does not get skating forward enough which has him forcing longer passes from deep in his own end with poor angles instead of opening up new passing options on the way up the ice. The quick fix is more Andrej Sekera, but longer term hopefully he will play his way out of it. Again, the flipside was that he was very good and made a number of key plays being in passing lanes and defending 1v1 against good players.
3) Chris Terry. He made another huge contribution with his goal to get the Canes on the board. The Canes have 2 points in the standings this season. He has played a big role in both and is making a claim to sticking around the NHL even when the Canes get healthier.
4) Blue line compete level. I already noted above the defensemen's attention to detail coming back to the net to clear rebounds all night. They also blocked 16 shots total. The Gleason/Murphy pairing had 8 by themselves.
5) Keeping it simple. The Canes lined up to a man and consistently made simple plays to push the puck forward or deep, back check and generally play a clean game.
6) Riley Nash. He is arguably the player taking up the most of the gap with the Canes injuries. He logged about 20 minutes of solid hockey tonight and seems to be getting increasingly comfortable in a bigger role playing top 6 type minutes and competition. This is vital for the Canes going forward because even when the Canes get a few players back there is still the hole left by Jordan Staal's longer-term absence.
I have to imagine that the players are a little bit disappointed that they lost Thursday night and are still winless, but this game very clearly moved the team forward not backward. The Canes get 4 days to get reinforcements healthy and continue to implement and refine Peters' system after seeing it in real game action 4 times now.
Next up is a Tuesday night in Winnipeg to start the annual NC State Fair road trip.
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63
Go Canes!
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