With a couple days off the Canes have fallen from the 3rd Metro playoff spot to 5th in the division. But with a win on Friday, the team will move right back to 3rd. That is how it is now and is likely to be for the next 3 months in the tightly bunched Metro Division.
In my "Canes bits" blog yesterday (You can find it HERE.), I talked about another Ruutu trade option, scenarios for Khudobin/the Canes 3-goalie situation, Elias Lindholm's development and the Canes schedule. For the schedule part, I said that the next 4 home games for the Canes are critical. The opponents are not gimmes, but the entire run is at home. And the team's schedule on the other side of the Olympic break is a gauntlet that features a 16/9 road/home split, a who's who of Cup contenders mixed in the road games and a heavy helping of back-to-backs with travel. The Canes really need to enter March in a playoff spot and ideally with at least a small cushion to use against some of the March/April schedule challenges.
Enter the St. Louis Blues on Friday to start the last sprint of 4 games to the break. The Blues have become a trendy Stanley Cup pick outside of the usuals and for good reason. The team is deep at forward and on defense and has a good mix of skill/scoring versus some bigger bodies with mobility. From the Canes standpoint, the biggest thing is that the Blues are very much able to bring the kind of fighting for pucks below the faceoff circles brand of hockey and then having to work real hard to advance the puck through the neutral zone brand of hockey that has been the Canes Achilles heel this season. Via a combination of Columbus retreating to running clock too early, a decent surge by the Canes starting in the 2nd period and a huge burst of Staal scoring in the 3rd period, the Canes stole a game late. Then Tuesday the Canes unfortunately ran into the old version of Montreal that similarly buttoned things down a bit and let the Canes amass savable shots against a goalie on his game. I think the bigger thing might just have been that the Canes were completely out of gas playing their 5th game in 7 nights.
So with the week sitting on the fence at 1-1, the Canes get the negative of playing the best of the 3 teams this week, but the positive of at least having 2 off days to recoup physically.
Keys to the game:
1) A better start both in terms of matching intensity and physicality but also in terms of the score board. The Canes spotted Columbus a couple early goals and overcame it. The Canes also gave up the 1st goal(s) against Montreal and saw the clamps put on after that. If the Canes spot St. Louis 2 goals early, the chances of winning plummet. The Canes need to bring the effort and jump early, but they also need to make sure that they pay attention to detail. Tripp and John talking about how the Canes played a decent 1st period and just need to clean up a few mistakes and stick to it tonight can be translated to mean "The team is in a real bad spot and will unfortunately be trying to summon another minor miracle to steal points again."
2) Willingness to play ugly. The Canes get another 3 days off after this game to recover and heal any bumps and bruises. The team needs to show a willingness to fight desperately for pucks below the faceoff circles and more importantly to pay the price to get to the front of the net. The most striking thing I noticed early in the Montreal game was how consistently the wounded and desperate Habs sent people crashing to the crease in a desperate attempt to create offense. It was the norm to see 2 Canadiens there all night. And it showed very clearly that it is very much just a mind set and determination to do it consistently. Against a Blues team that can Columbus you and just let you fire pucks from the outside all night, the outcome of Friday's game could very well be determined by the Canes willingness to play a bit out of character and score an ugly goal or 2 to boost a struggling power play or even net a goal or 2 at even strength.
3) Keep riding the horses. Except for the shutout against Montreal, the Canes top players have been playing well and scoring in bunches of late. It is getting to be that time of year when your best players need to consistently be better than the other teams' best players and win games. While it is possible to ride hot goaltending, scoring surges by depth players, luck, etc. to wins here and there, the path to a more extended run of playoff pace hockey must go through a team's top players. Those players for the Canes have been doing exactly what they need to recently. Their ability to do so Friday will play a huge role in the game's outcome against a team that has its own set of top-end talent.
Out of the gate, I will be especially watching a couple things: --Do the Canes look like 2 days off was enough to recharge the batteries? --How is Justin Faulk skating especially with the puck on his stick in his own zone? After being incredibly consistent throughout the 1st half of the season, he has alternated a bit between normal solid and struggling. For me, the easiest read on where he is comes from watching him move the puck out of his own end. When he gets skating at a good pace 1st, things open up, he gets farther up the ice and he moves the puck effectively. When instead, he is a bit sluggish getting going, he tends to try to move the puck from closer to a stand still and from deeper in his own end before passing lanes develop and the result is too often turnovers of the bad variety.
The Canes need to win an "out of comfort zone" challenge against an elite team to make a good week of it. Puck drops a little bit after 7pm at PNC Arena.
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