St. Louis and other teams will make claims before it is all said and done, but right now Anaheim is the best team in the NHL thus far where it matters in the standings. So if nothing else, Sunday night offered a chance to measure themselves against the best or at least 1 of them. The results were not good. The ultimate final score of 5-3 actually does not look that bad, but if you watched the game, it really was not that close. Anaheim rolled to a 3-0 lead I the 1st period, extended it to 5-0 and then maybe coasted a bit too much. With the loss and the other activity on Sunday, the Canes will wake up Monday morning with only 21 games remaining and 7 points (and minus 1 game left) out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. It is not over, but it is as close as it can get.
Man how fortunes have changed. The Canes played arguably their best game of the season on January 31 in beating a good St. Louis team in a great hockey game. With the win, the Canes entered February in 3rd place in the Metro Division and looking at 3 home games heading into the Olympic break to extend it. The team stumbled a bit losing 2 of 3 at home heading into the break and has completely collapsed since then losing 4 straight coming out of the break and all but eliminating any chance of making the playoffs.
A few notes:
--Andrej Sekera. If you missed the game but DVRed it, I am not sure I can recommend spending 2 1/2 hours on the game, but I would definitely hunt down the highlight reel individual effort goal by Andrej Sekera. If you want an answer for whether he is mailing it in at this point, you get a very clear 'no' from that single play. The astounding part for me was after skating left, right and center for 20-25 seconds, he twice got banged into the boards. His legs had to be burning at this point, and it seemed like a logical time to give up the puck. Instead he wheeled, burned a path to the net and scored.
--Nathan Gerbe. Ditto.
--Brett Bellemore. He continues to just show that he wants to stay in the NHL by playing decent hockey and paying the price (blocking shots, dropping the gloves, etc.).
--The 3rd period. As disappointing as the results are, per my comments on Sekera and Gerbe, I think fans do need to give the Canes credit for not completely mailing it in. The compete level on Saturday in LA was good. And playing a back-to-back against a very good team and pretty much done by the end of the 2nd period, the Canes fired 26 shots on net and scored 2 goals in the 3rd period. I think part of it was the Ducks coasting, but even still the Canes players deserve some credit.
I will skip the negative comments today. Most of it is beating a dead horse at this point, and it is tiring.
Instead, I think it is interesting to think about how the Ducks (and many other good teams) are different from the Canes. Most striking to me are a few things:
--They are fast and aggressive. Nowhere on the ice does there seem to be time/space to do much of the pretty stuff that seems to be the Canes bread and butter when things are going well.
--They are big and physical but not slow by any means. Games like this make the quantity measure of hits that they show at the end of the periods seem meaningless. It is not about how many. It is about having a number of players who are big and will drive you through the boards is you do not watch where you are going. The Canes completely lack that. Who on the Canes would you fear coming up the middle or in the corners?
--They are SOOOOO much better than the Canes in defending the neutral zone. We saw a bunch of it in the Dallas game too. The good teams in the NHL transition from defense to offense incredibly quickly and prey on teams that have no ability to slow opponents moving the team up the ice with speed.
Next up is the last game of a 5-game road trip that will very likely be the nails in the 2013-14 season's coffin.
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63
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