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The DR is in the House as Canes Down Blues-Off to Face Hawks Tonight |
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The DR (Derek Ryan-2G) was in the building against St. Louis yesterday. Last night, the Canes pulled out an exciting 4-2 win over St. Louis. It was exactly the type of effort the Canes needed after two previous disappointing results. They’ll be looking to build on another strong effort tonight though as they travel up to play Chicago before they head home for four-games.
This will be the second time that these teams have met in just over a week. The previous meeting saw the Canes win at home in a tough 3-2 battle. Overall, the game was played with a fast pace and both teams were well disciplined. The Canes won 30 of 53 (56.6%) of the face-offs, however, tonight will be more of a test with Hawks having last change.
One area that was most impressive in the previous match-up was that the Canes showed a lot of grit when they gave up an early goal. The Canes turned up their game and rebounded with two-goals in just under two minutes. It was impressive to see the Canes buzzing around the rest of the first period-ultimately, they out-shot the Blackhawks 16-8.
The recent tenacity that the Canes show after allowing a goal is one of their most positive characteristics. Not only was this present during the Chicago game, the Canes showed a similar surge last night after St. Louis took the 2-1 lead. The result was a very strong second half of the second period. If they can find a way to maintain that type of intensity for 60-minutes consistently, they will be a tough team to beat.
Both teams will be playing on tired legs as the Blackhawks took on the Sabres last night in a back-and-forth effort for a 4-3 OT win. Off of the eye-test looking at the box score, Chicago appeared to dominate the game as they lead the Sabres in SOG 43-20. That doesn’t even include the 27 shots that the Sabres blocked.
However, there was one area that stood out to me that I would hope to see the Canes exploit tonight. The Blackhawks allowed two-goals on three PK’s against the Sabres last night—looking at the Blackhawks PK, they are 29th in the league only killing 74.8% of penalties against them. Given the Canes only got one PP chance last time, I hope they can generate more penalties tonight.
Beyond the Blackhawks having a poor PK this season, this is significant to the Canes because of their recent PP struggles. Before Skinner scored the GWG on the PP in the third period last night, the Canes hadn’t scored on 21 straight PP opportunities. You could almost feel the “finally” expression from the entire team when Skinner found the back of the net with a roaring slap-shot.
The Canes broke a lot of streaks last night and should come into tonight flying: A two game losing skid, Skinner’s six-game pointless draught, Ryan’s 10-game scoreless draught, no goals on 21 straight PP and their first win with that particular set of referee’s.
I thought the Canes did a relatively strong job on controlling the pace of the game last night. The Canes came out hard and Ryan scored just over a minute into the game to set the tone for the Canes. The rest of the period was definitely a “feeling” out process for both teams and slowed down.
A big question coming into the night was “how good is Ty Rattie?” I think it is still too early to form an opinion on him—however, he did show some nice hands a few times, created a few good rebound chances off of shots and had decent skating. It’ll be interesting to see how he looks after a few more games with the Canes.
I was concerned with the Canes performance in face-offs around the second-half of the first period. The Blues had won 10 of 14 draws at one point in the first period—the Canes were able to win the final three draws to get it to a Blues advantage of only 10-7. I think a large portion on the struggles was related to the Blues having final change, as well as being unfamiliar with Western Conference teams/players as much.
By the end of the game though, the Canes improved significantly in the dot—this is one reason I think that not being familiar with the Blues centers is why they struggled early on. Tuevo and McClement were the ones who struggled the most—winning only 3 of 10 and 1 of 4 respectively.
I imagine that the Canes will do better in face-offs tonight since they have seen the Hawks already this season. In addition, Tuevo is a former-Blackhawk, so he should hopefully be more in tune with some of their moves and etc.
An area that the Canes wanted to improve on after the loss to New Jersey was moving the puck faster on the break-out. I think this was the main reason the Blues won the first period takeaway battle 6-0. The break-out had a few hiccups, however, recovered to prevent any goals. By the end of the game, they cleaned up their D and neutral zone play and improved in the takeaway battle—the Blues won in takeaways by 12-8.
Where I thought the Canes did extraordinarily well was creating odd-man rushes. The first goal by Ryan came on a “2-1 rush” off of a nice play in the neutral zone. After that goal, the Canes had another five or so quality “2-1 rushes” where Allen shut the door—Staal and Aho also both had breakaways that Allen stymied. Based on the quality of Canes’ shots, the score easily could have been much worse if it wasn’t for Allen’s play.
Defensively, the Slavin-Pesce and Hainsey-Faulk combo as the Top-4 D for the Canes did a great job shutting down the top Blues forwards—Tarasenko only had two “very high” scoring chances, one of which he finished off on the PP.
I was most impressed by Slavin last night as he had some great plays on the puck, as well as made a beautiful move to set up the second goal by McClement. Slavin easily led the time with TOI with just shy of 26 minutes with just over six on the PK. While he isn’t the most physical guy, he is fearless at blocking shots and leads the team with 81.
Overall, Slavin continues to excel each game and played a central part in the Canes ability to control the top end players from St. Louis. The Canes ability to slow down the Hawks top-two lines depends on how well the Slavin-Pesce combination performs tonight.
One Cane that struggled a bit last night was Murphy. He had a few turnovers and took a poor penalty that resulted in the Blues second goal. It was noticeable that Coach Peters didn’t have much confidence in him as he logged just shy of 13 minutes. Given the carousel the Canes are running on the 6th D-spot, I wouldn’t be surprised to see either Dahlbeck or Tennyson return to the line-up tonight.
Finally, tonight should be another very strong test for this young Canes team. I’d look for the Canes to try and set the pace early—they will want a strong fore-check, utilize their speed and transition the break-out fast. Hopefully, they bring the same intensity as last night.
The Canes should have plenty of motivation, as they are now only four points out of the final wildcard position with two games in hand. Puck drop is at 8:30 (EST) and is on FSCR and CSCH. Go Canes!
CANES EXTRA:
Don’t forget about 50% off Papa John’s because Canes scored 3+ goals:
Homegrown Series continues at the PNC Arena on Sunday:
Congrats to Michael Leighton, as he was named to the AHL All-Star Game:
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