Saturday's game in LA highlighted just why games like Tuesday in Buffalo were so crucial to making a playoff run. The Canes did not play their best game by any means on Saturday, but it was not a horrible game. But unable to generate much offensively or catch a big break when they needed, as often happens against good teams on the road, a decent effort yielded nothing in the standings.
In my game preview, I said that I wanted evidence of heart, courage, pride and all the intangible stuff. Despite the loss, I have to give the Canes decent marks in this regard. At a minimum, they showed up and competed and deserve credit for that.
A few quick notes:
--Andrej Sekera. It is a shame that the quality of his play this season will be buried underneath a struggling team in a southern hockey market. He is top 10 in goals and top 15 in total points amongst defenseman and did it playing for a team that is 29th on the power play which is when a large percentage of defenseman scoring happens.
--Anton Khudobin. After giving up a bad goal early from a wide angle, Khudobin battled his way to a 2 goals against effort and in the process at least gave the team a chance to claim points in the standings. But I think signs that he is trying to do too much are starting to emerge creep into his game. Of late, he has been playing a bit too wide of the net fairly regularly overplaying things a bit and has also had a few 'oopses' trying to do too much handling the puck.
--Too many penalties. The Canes power play was generally good and has been recently, but the Canes lost when they gave the Kings 1 too many chances in a game that was sloppy in that regard. The biggest offender was newly inserted Mike Komisarek who managed 3 minor penalties in only about 8 minutes of ice time.
--7 points. That is now the gap between the Canes and the last playoff spot with only 22 games to go.
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