Canes Dropped in OT by Senators (ward)

ward

Canes Dropped in OT by Senators

By Ben Case

Nov 2, 2016 • 8:40 pm

0comment-bubble

The Main Problem: The Carolina Hurricanes (2-4-3)are in familiar ground and not in a good way. The overtime woes continue to haunt the Hurricanes as they dropped they game 2-1 in OT on Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators (6-3-0). I know that many people will talk about the fact that “at least they got a point.… However, for a young team that hasn’t made the playoffs in seven consecutive seasons and is trying to break out of a rebuild, the time for moral victories such as an OTL is over. Last season, the Canes led the NHL with an astounding 16 overtime losses; nine games into the season the Canes are in familiar territory as they are now 0-3 after regulation.

The concern over continuously losing games like these is the mental block and confidence killer that can sometimes begin to set in—this meaning, the feeling of “here we go again… heading into overtime. Creating a culture of winning begins with a mentality—refusing to accept OTL as moral victories is a characteristic of that culture that sets the standard of winning. In fact, dating back to the 2012-13 (Half-season bc of lockout) the Canes are a mere 14-45 in overtime. Many of the members of this current team have joined the Canes or were drafted after the lockout season—so you can see why these types of overtime games early are key to setting a mentality and building confidence.

Even more concerning is how similar this slow start is in comparison to the previous two seasons. The Canes started the 2015-16 season off going 2-6-0 in their first eight games and 2014-15 had a 0-6-2 start. Through 20 games, they went 7-10-3 in 2015-16 and 6-14-2 in 2014-15. The Canes really need to string together a series of wins to hopefully avoid similar results from past seasons. You can’t stress enough how important getting points early in the season is, just take a look at Eklunds blog on the correlation between team performances in October and November as projected towards making the playoffs.

Senators Post Game Thoughts:

The Canes did exactly what they needed to to start the game off at Ottawa. They forced a couple of turnovers early and scored a goal in the first minute of the game. Craig Anderson was carrying a 120+ minute shutout streak coming into the game, so scoring early was key to hopefully getting him off of his game. Unfortunately for the Canes, Craig Anderson was a brick wall after letting in the first shot of the game. The goal came 36 seconds into the game as Slavin took advantage of a turnover, cut past a defender at the blueline and took off for a breakaway that he finished off as he pulled the puck backhand and fired it top shelf.

The Canes were able to control play after that for most of the first period and held a substantial shot advantage of 16-5 through the first period. There was even some rough stuff, as Di Guiseppe took on Matt Puempel almost 5 minutes into the first. Despite controlling most of the play, the Senators were able to strike on a lapse in the defensive zone that saw the Canes players get a bit out of position. As the Canes were scrambling on defense, the Senators worked the puck up the boards and went D to D to a wide open Phaneuf who stepped into a big slap-shot to beat Cam Ward low-glove.

The rest of the game was a goalie-duel that saw both teams play solid defensively and also on the PK. In overtime, Lindholm had a partial breakaway, however, had his stick lifted at the last second. The majority of overtime saw Ottawa controlling the play and the Senators were rewarded with the win when Turris snapped a well-placed laser through a screen and past Ward’s glove. Craig Anderson stopped 32 of 33 and Cam Ward stopped 30 of 32.

After the game, a lot of the commentary was on how unfortunate the play was that the puck missed Slavin’s stick and went through his body. While I agree it is unfortunate and in some cases results in a blocked shot, I think there has to be legitimate frustration from Ward on how Slavin played the situation. In a 1-1 situation with support and the puck carrier appears to be heading down the boards, your job is to ensure that the man coming towards you doesn’t cut across (AKA cut back on you) the tops of the circle—the chance of Turris beating Slavin goal-line and cutting it across Ward for a goal is relatively slim, so to be overplaying the forward seems unnecessary.

Where it hurts even more is the fact that he doesn’t just reach with his stick to block the shot, he also steps his body into the shooting lane which makes the save significantly tougher for any goaltender to stop the puck. If Slavin merely keeps his stick in the shooting lane as opposed to stepping into it, then Ward would have a clean view of the shot, as opposed to fighting to determine the trajectory of the puck. As a goalie of 20 years, I can tell you for a fact that the split second lost in which the puck is released and goes through the screen is substantial enough to make well-placed shots like this an absolute nightmare for any goaltender. You have to have the confidence that your goalie will make the save, trying to do his job for him will only make it 10x tougher for him.

Since we are on goaltending, Cam Ward played his fourth straight game and has started to look significantly better than earlier in the season. While he struggled during his first 3 starts of the season, throughout his last 3 games, he has stopped 83 of 90 shots for a .922 save percentage and a GAA slightly above 2. If the Canes are going to win games this season, they will need results similar to his previous 3 games.

Finally, the Canes finished 0-3 on the powerplay and the Senators went 0-2. The Canes PP was one of the hottest in the league to start the season off, however, in the past 5 games started struggling and has only converted on 2 of 14 opportunities.

While it is not time for the alarm bell to start going off yet, the urgency and pressure to win is starting to pick up. The one positive thing about the forecast for the Canes is that 6 of their next 8 games will be at home. Hopefully, being back on home ice will allow them to get on a winning streak and find some added confidence. Another positive note is that the Canes have 4 off days before playing Nashville on the 5th—this will give the new lines that ran against the Senators some extra practice time to build chemistry.

Canes Extra:

Canes marketing department is back at it again. This time, they have announced that they are going to make 8-home games feature the community. Check out the #HurricanesHomegrown series:

Have you ever wanted to shoot from center ice during intermission?

Show Comments
Loading...
Loading...
0
Show comments for this article