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Game #77: Good win by the Canes

April 3, 2014, 11:35 PM ET [4 Comments]
Matt Karash
Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
As noted in my game preview, the weather did not disappoint for tailgating at a solid 70+ degrees, mild and sunny by late afternoon. And the Canes did not disappoint once fans were inside the building.

Thursday night's win against the Dallas Stars featured the reliable standby of another great game by Anton Khudobin. It also featured a few less common positives. The Canes played without Andrej Sekera who has played a significant role in many Canes wins. And the win also featured 2 power play goals by a unit that has been surging of late but mostly missing in action for the season in total.

A few quick notes:

--Anton Khudobin. His ability to use the Canes too often sleepy start as a way to quickly work into a rhythm could not be a more perfect fit for this team. The Canes did get much better as the game wore on, but they were loose early with a number of breakaways or partial/near breakaways.

The game pushes him to 2nd in the entire league in save percentage amongst qualified players.

--Justin Faulk. Minus his usual partner Andrej Sekera, he had a solid game defensively and notched a power play goal and an assist to boot on his bobblehead night.

--Nathan Gerbe. Now that we have seen almost a full season of him, he continues to be underappreciated for the consistency in his effort/compete level.

--John-Michael Liles. He has played in a pretty decent range of okay to pretty good defensively since joining the Canes, but Thursday was his biggest game offensively with a big 3-point night.

--Tryouts for next year. I have noted my anxiousness to see Zach Boychuk get 1 more shot at cracking the Canes roster. He looked decent in about 8 minutes of ice time and did have 1 nifty move on the rush to beat 1 defender but was then stymied by a 2nd, but otherwise did not stand out. Chris Terry had a big 2-point night. You can see his offensive skill level starting to shine through a bit more as he increases his NHL experience game to game, but I just am not sure his mobility is enough for the NHL level.

--Elias Lindholm. While he did not score or otherwise really star in the game, he continues to look more comfortable at the NHL level. Dallas is big and fast. Lindholm took a couple pretty good hits but seemed no worse for wear afterward. His issue physically was not ever getting blindsided because of lack of awareness or playing with his head down. Rather, it was more simply the ability to absorb the impact of big bodies by more bouncing off it than trying match it. He seems to be getting more comfortable with the regular contact.

Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63

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