Yesterday I posted a book-length blog that emptied a couple Canes items floating around my head in 1 fell swoop since the Canes have games both days this week. It included 3 topics: 1-What to do with Peters; 2) The situation at forward; 3) The situation on the blue line. If you missed it and are not 1 of the people who complains about my long blogs, you can find that HERE.
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The Canes enter Saturday’s matinee in Boston back on the down swing of the NHL rollercoaster. Over the past few weeks the Canes nearly drove off the cliff losing 5 straight when both goalies went down. Then Justin Peters (with help from the defense) rose up to right the ship and go 4-0-1 in a 5-game home stand. Saturday’s game finds the Canes having lost 3 games straight again and suddenly sitting near the bottom of the bunched up Metro Division.
The ride is not for the faint of heart.
If I could pick 4-5 teams that I would rather not play in this game needing a win, the Bruins would be 1 of them. They are obviously a good hockey team, but maybe more significantly they are difficult to play against, can be stifling defensively even against good/confident offensive teams and they will do what they can to take the game to the walls and the crease making for a game centered around 1-on-1 physical battles that they excel at winning.
But the Canes do not get to pick. If the team wants to avoid losing 4 straight, the only option is to beat Boston on the road.
Is this even possible? Though it does not feel like it right now, it is definitely possible. Hockey is a game of bounces, big plays and parity where anyone can beat anyone else on a good night.
Okay, so what is it going to take then? I think 3 things:
1) Defense and goaltending. I hope I am proven wrong and look incredibly stupid for saying this, but I just do not see the Canes winning a wild 5-4 event. The team is going to have to be solid defensively to give itself a chance to win with 2-3 goals.
2) A couple players need to be truly great. With the team struggling offensively, someone is going to need to step up and generate some offense. Seemingly (per practice today) back on a 3rd line where Muller can get him on the ice against a couple of Boston’s lesser defenders instead of Chara, Skinner seems like a favorite for this role, but right now anyone who wants the job can have it.
3) Muller needs to make slight but important adjustments to the system that gets the puck from deep in the defensive zone to the neutral zone with at least even numbers and enough speed to back up the defense a bit. Based on how Monday’s loss in Raleigh played out, the Bruins are clearly 1 of the teams that got the book on how to stymie the Canes puck movement. You ideally force things right, seal the forward outlet on the wall so that he has no north-south option via pass or skating and then get another defender or 2 aggressively up far enough to take away the pass to another forward in the middle of the ice in the neutral zone. It is not that the Canes methodology cannot beat this simple clamping down approach. It is that in its current state of sluggishness, it is struggling to move the puck fast enough to get behind the 3v3 or 3v4 in the defensive zone to the greener pastures on the other side of it in the neutral zone. 2v2 or 3v3 is waiting behind the pressure, but the Canes just are not crisp enough getting going north-south to ever get there. Because the Canes are struggling to find any crispness and speed getting from the 1st defenseman to the forward on the wall to going north-south it is has been pretty easy to bottle up the Canes on the 1 side of the ice. I am overstepping my hockey expertise trying to sort out specific system mechanics to address this problem, but maybe it is as simple as getting the 2nd defensemen to come across a bit to and provide a passing option, even the numbers on that side and most importantly get the puck moving with speed in a different lane that forces the forecheck to adjust quickly, get outnumbered in the neutral zone behind the initial pressure and therefore retreat a bit to be safe. Regardless, especially since the Bruins just played the Canes 5 days ago, I think trying to do the exact same thing except better/more successfully is a recipe for another rough night playing too much in the defensive zone and without the puck.
What I will be watching Saturday:
--Hopefully the game. My Saturday afternoon is completely booked as usual. This leaves me trusting the combination of Time-Warner and SportSouth to actually have a game on my DVR when I get to it. That combination has been about as hit or miss as the Canes offense.
--Elias Lindholm. As I stated in my blog yesterday, if the Canes are going to go with a 2A (JStaal's defense-focused line) and 2B (Skinner's predatory scoring line) balanced approach which I agree with it, the team needs more offense out of that C3 slot than Nash can provide. With a run of healthy ice time and hopefully some confidence built in Charlotte, does he look more like the lottery pick phenom ready to play NHL hockey like we hoped in June? Or does he still look like a rookie who is more learning than contributing?
--Jeff Skinner. He is the greatest hope right now to be an offensive catalyst individually, for his line and for the power play. There were signs of hope in Thursday's game. Can he pick up where he left off offensively?
--Kirk Muller. It is not like he and his coaching staff can or should completely scrap the current system of moving the puck up the ice. But there must be an adjustment or 2 quickly to combat the current aggressive forechecking formula that is hemming the Canes in their own end and making the ratio of time playing defense to time playing offense a nearly insurmountable obstacle. My hope is that the 1st period does not look like a "we just need to do the exact same thing better" approach to solving the current woes getting the puck out of the defensive zone and up the ice.
A win in Saturday would be a huge 1. The Canes do begin to see more games against middle-tier (not easy) competition. Heading into a somewhat more favorable stretch of schedule with a big win could serve as a confidence builder and also a catalyst to head back to the up part of the rollercoaster ride of a season so far.
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