Friday night the Carolina Hurricanes took care of business beating a bottomish Florida team that had played the night before and traveled. At least on the score board the game went according to script with the Canes mounting an early lead, eventually extending it and never really being threatened in a 5-1 win. The margin of victory and ice time earned by the 4th line with strong play early when the game was still being decided enabled the Canes to spread forward minutes pretty evenly. The top line of Tlusty/EStaal/Semin was light as were JStaal and Skinner, so the Canes top forwards should have more in the tank despite the back-to-back. On defense, I was a bit surprised to see Faulk and Hainsey at about 23 minutes each, but the minutes were not incredibly taxing.
But the biggest thing coming out of the Florida game is the need to flip the switch back to "hard-working hockey" for tonight's game versus Montreal. The Canes benefitted from a loose game early which made for some fun and easy skate/move the puck/score brand of hockey. The neutral zone was largely a free pass all night, and the game was mostly played in the middle of the rink where the Canes thrive and minus a ton of time fighting for pucks in the corners. Even worse, the Canes were real loose themselves in the 2nd half of the game giving up multiple odd man rushes in the 3rd period when they should have been tightening things up. Only a 5-1 lead, a couple great Khudobin saves, a few near misses from in close and even a post or 2 kept the Canes from giving up 2-3 goals in the 3rd period alone. If the Canes show up hoping for another easy scoring game Saturday night, they are likely to find themselves down by a goal or 2 early and staring at the shutdown version of Montreal that makes it real hard to get through the neutral zone with any speed and makes offense a struggle.
With that my keys to the game:
1) Flip the switch back to hard-working and handling the details. Saturday's game is likely to be much tighter. The Canes need to bring the hard hats and be willing to patiently and diligently do the hard work to create scoring chances. They also need to quickly clean up the sloppy play in their own end that ran rampant at the end of a fun win on Friday.
2) Be strong in net early. As of right now, I have not seen an official announcement of who starts in net for the Canes. My hunch is that Muller will go back to Khudobin, and I am on record as agreeing with this. Regardless, it is crucial for the Canes goalie to be good in net especially early. The 1st goal is always huge, and I think it is even more so in this game. And if the Canes give up the 1st, it becomes even more important not to let Montreal build from their. We did have the strange New Year's Eve comeback miracle, but over the past few years an early deficit against Montreal usually spells big trouble once they settle into a defensively safe and sound game and then find opportunistic offense.
I think this is exactly the kind of game that will determine the Canes fate this season. Down the stretch, the Canes play a whopping 6 back-to-backs in the middle of a very busy schedule. The Canes also face a higher caliber of opponent on average after the Olympic break. How the Canes fare on nights when maybe they are only at 80-90% physically and facing a good team that will make them work hard for goals will probably be the difference. There just are not enough easy 5-1 wins like Friday night left on the schedule to get into the playoffs.
It takes a win Saturday to make Friday's win good; otherwise a good start becomes a "treading water" 1-1 weekend. Treading water was good enough in Oct-Dec when the Metro Division was struggling, but in Jan-Feb treading water has become the equivalent of left behind as the entire division has started winning.
It is another huge game, a sellout crowd (or at least very close at last check), Alexander Semin bobblehead and the last chance for NHL hockey for 3 weeks! Don't forget the 6pm start!
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