The Carolina Hurricanes enter Sunday’s contest against Nashville with a 3-game winning streak and looking to run their January/2014 record to 3-0. The game is a rare “fair back-to-back… in that both teams played last night and traveled. Nashville enters the game on a bit of an upswing with a 2-0-2 record in its last 4 including a 5-4 shootout loss at Florida last night. But things are not all rosy in Nashville hockey-wise. The team was 0-4-1 in the stretch before the current upswing and sits in last place in its division. Doing comparisons like this makes it clear how thankful the Canes should be for their division/situation. Nashville has only 1 point less than the Canes but is 11 points outside of a playoff spot in the more challenging Western Conference and much closer to another turn in the draft lottery than a playoff spot.
The Canes have already managed a good week with a guarantee of no worse that 3-1, but if the Canes are going to make the playoffs at some point they need to run off a stretch of winning hockey that lasts longer than 3-4 games or they will lose out to someone else who does. I keep saying that January is that month. Sunday is a game that decides if the Canes settle for generally positive or achieve great for the week and continue the momentum.
From the Canes side, this game has a lot of moving parts:
--In net. Best guess (have not heard officially yet) is that Justin Peters will get back into the action tonight. After possibly a season-best effort in an OTL in Tampa on December, he fell flat in his next 2 starts before handing over the controls to Ward and then Khudobin. Khudobin played back-to-backs Sun/Mon for Charlotte before playing Thu and Sat for the Canes with a bunch of travel to boot. I would be surprised to see Muller come back to him Sunday when he has a decent backup in Peters. It would be the 5th game in 8 nights with travel after each game for Khudobin.
--Eric Staal. His availability is in question for Sunday's game. He left Saturday’s game with a lower body injury. On the Canes TV telecast Tripp Tracy used the word “tweak… and suggested that he had an issue coming into the game. It is not certain but it seems reasonable to guess that this is not a new injury. EStaal also came out to skate before the 3rd period seemingly to test things out. If he was in fact a possibility to play the 3rd period, this would suggest that his lower body injury is more of a day-to-day thing than a long-term issue – hopefully. But with a back-to-back and considering he was not good to go at about 9pm last night, he seems unlikely to play today. With Riley Nash already out of the lineup, that leaves Jordan Staal playing a ton of minutes, Manny Malhotra continuing his role as a more minutes center I guess theoretically now manning the 2nd line. And it asks Brett Sutter to take on a bigger role with more minutes and minus too much ability to pick/choose nice safe matchups for limited shifts. I have suggested a couple times that the Canes could look at Ruutu as a possibility to center the 3rd line (before injuries even). Not sure what Muller will do on short notice, but that option could come into play. Whether Muller goes this route or not, I think it likely that the Canes play a strange mix and match version of lines with JStaal doubleshifting a bit and a rotating mix of who is on the ice.
--Muller gets his 1st game of Liles/Murphy on home ice where he can pick matchups. They survived, were positive and saw a tremendous Ryan Murphy pass to Jeff Skinner net the game-winner on Thursday, but they also looked a bit out of sorts and under siege at times in their own end. In Saturday’s game, I thought the duo looked better on the defensive side of the puck. So will Muller use his last change and ability to dictate matchups to shield them a bit and get them into offensive/safe situations? Or will he consider trying to use their skating and puck-moving ability to play aggressive and prey on lesser-skating Predators sets regardless of zone and try to use the duo to generate offense from the back end? Best guess is that it is some of both. Muller seems to be leaning toward playing an aggressive game, so especially early, I think he might go for it a bit. But if the Canes get out front by a couple goals, I think he might button things down, play a tiny bit more conservatively lineup-wise and try to ride his top 4 D to a win.
Keys to the game:
1) Play patient but opportunistic. Though the teams’ style of play is different, I the formula for the Isles game win could again be applicable. In that game, the Canes just played a sound and steady game early. They did not generate a ton offensively, but they were big mistake free and gave Khudobin a chance. Then when the Isles broke down and got a bit loose defensively, the Canes feasted quickly and built a lead and a path to a win. Even minus Eric Staal if he does not play, with Skinner scorching hot and a few secondary players really clicking, I think the Canes have more fire power. The difference is that the Predators when playing well, can be a bit tighter than the Islanders which is why I call for patience.
Shorter version: Play defense 1st and do not gift offense to the Preds. Be patient offensively and do not cheat if it takes a while. Be opportunistic and finish when given the chance offensively.
2) The C3 minutes. If EStaal does not play, the Canes are down to 2 centers in terms of regular NHL roster players who have been playing in that slot. That means that the team will need to get more than the minimum in terms of minutes in the center slot from some combination of Brett Sutter, possibly Ruutu or someone else playing shifts there and as many extra shifts as possible from JStaal and Malhotra. After being victimized positionally for a goal against and then seeing very little ice time afterward on Thursday, Brett Sutter had a better game Saturday with more ice time. He should also feel good about scoring a goal. If the team could pick a time for him to play 2-3 great games at the NHL level this year and help with depth, that time is now.
3) No let up. Sunday's game just like the game Saturday is 1 that the Canes will see many times in January (hence my declaration that January decides this team’s season). The Canes are playing a beatable team and a game that they should win. But in the NHL “should win… is much more like 60/40 than 90/10. Teams, even good ones, regularly lose games against beatable teams. The key for the Canes is keeping the confidence from its winning streak but otherwise discarding any memories of the recent past that could have the team come in minus the “determination for today… that is necessary to win any NHL game regardless of opponent.
The rest of the Metro Division fray (not counting Pit who is above it) is idle today, so with a win the Canes would move to 4th place in the division and be only a single point behind both 2nd and 3rd place which are tied.
Now is not the time to revel in the part of the good week that is past. It is the time to seize the opportunity that is today.
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