Last night, the Hurricanes went on their first 3-game winning streak of the season as they beat the Canadiens 3-2. What is more impressive about notching their first winning streak of the season is the opponents that they beat—Washington, San Jose and Montreal which collectively combine for a 36-15-4 record this season. A major question during the Canes current 5-game home-stand surrounded how they would do playing some top level competition—so far through the first 4 games, they are 3-1-0.
There were two main story-lines that affected the outcome of the games for the Canes—goaltending and Coach Peters decision to tweak the lines in the third period.
Let’s start with Cam Ward.
If Cam Ward didn’t play the way he did through the first two periods, the Canes wouldn’t have been in a position to come back in the third period. The Canes came out offensively completely flat and were out-shot 21-8 going into the final frame. Petry’s goal came on an empty-net opportunity in the second period as Daniel Carr was checked by Hanifin into Ward leaving him no chance.
Ward played strong in the third too and made some critical saves to preserve the win. Andrew Shaw scored late in the third on a fantastic give-and-go deflection play. You couldn’t really fault Ward, as it was a very nice goal IMO:
Overall, Ward played another very strong game and I was most impressed with his ability to track and control shots from the point. Ward now posts a 5-4-1 record and has improved his GAA to 2.46 with a .912 save percentage. Looking at goalies who have played ten or more games, only fourteen have better save percentages than Ward. How much better is Cam playing right now? In his first three games this season, he allowed 12 goals—however, in his seven starts this November, he has also only allowed 12 goals on 202 shots and has a .941.
The big question is will he be able to continue this play as they have nine games (six on the road) in fourteen days (November 20th to December 4th) and none of those have more than one-night rest. In Ward’s hot streak, from October 28th to November 20th, the Canes only played 10 games total which I think was a major factor in allowing him to get hot and stay hot. At 33 and in his 12th NHL season, Ward’s durability and capability to consistently play has decreased— this season in games with one-night rest he is only 1-2-1 with a 2.50 GAA and a .907 save percentage this year. This is why I stressed the importance of a reliable back-up option last post.
The second story-line from last night was Coach Peters decision to shake things up a bit with both the offensive and defensive lines. The Canes shortened the bench and only ran 3-lines in the third, as well as utilizing a few different looks with the D-pairings. It wasn’t surprising that he made the offensive chances since they only generated 8 total shots through two. The biggest move was breaking the TSA line-up and putting Teravainen on the “first line” and switching Skinner to the “second line.” Both guys ended up scoring deflection goals on their new lines from point shots by Hainsey. It was very good to see Skinner get on the board, especially given that he only had one assist in the previous five games despite starting the season off red-hot with twelve points in nine games (6g, 6a).
I thought that both the new lines looked very strong—once they got some momentum they were very aggressive on the fore-check and created some nice turnovers. As for guys getting on the board who have been quiet, it was also nice to see Lindholm make some strong plays with the puck, as well as get an assist on a nice drop-pass to Rask who fired the GWG past Montoya on the low blocker side. Lindholm now has two assists in his past three games. It is refreshing to see him putting up some stats, as he only had two assists in his first thirteen games.
Canes Relocation: Rumors began to pop up yesterday about relocation, I just don’t see it happening if you know and understand the market in Raleigh. The NHL will want to remain invested in Raleigh mainly because it continues to be one of the fastest growing populations and markets. Beyond the growth, it is the demographic of what jobs are growing and who is moving here. According to Forbes in 2014, Raleigh and Durham are second and third in the nation as “most educated cities in the U.S.” This area is home to some of the best medical, agricultural, business and legal educations and facilities in the world—it continues to be known as one of the leading areas in medical and agricultural industries growth too.
The fact of the matter is that this is not a market that the NHL will want to pull out of because of its sustained and exponential economic and population growth—I just don’t see them leaving a 2M+ person population to go to Quebec City with a populous of 500K. From 2000-20009, RDU was one of the most rapidly growing cities and saw 40% population growth. In fact, BizJournals predicts this
market will set the pace for any Metropolitan City in the U.S. with growth rate extending through 2025.
What sunk the Canes isn’t the market, population or economic viability of the fans—it was them trying to hold on to barely being mediocre. This isn’t a market like Buffalo/Toronto/Edmonton that supports their team regardless of the results, the Canes are in a market that will not respond well to 8-10 years of being completely irrelevant—this is also probably one of the reasons the Canes management tried to avoid a “full-tank” which honestly probably elongated the period of irrelevance.
The culture throughout the Triangle is one of winning when it comes to sports, there is almost one team within the triangle that is in contention for a National Championship—if you aren’t winning, there is too much competition for viewership here. If you think that there aren’t enough Canes fans and the triangle can’t afford season tickets, don’t kid yourself—one ticket to UNC at Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium average sale point last year was almost $2,000.
Right now, the least expensive option I found was $1,600 a ticket and the most expensive was just shy of $10K—the lowest available Duke-UNC ticket is almost a grand more than the lowest season ticket Canes package ($698.00) and within $700 of Lower Level North season tickets ($2,332.00). In essence, some people will pay more for a single game in Cameron than the most expensive season tickets for the Canes. In fact, according to Forbes in 2013, average price for one ticket to any Duke game was $409—just shy of the cost to attend 41-home games for the Canes.
Don’t forget that when they were winning, the formerly known RBC Center (now PNC Arena) was considered.
one of the loudest building in the NHL and actually set records. If the Canes can get back to being a playoff potential team, then the fans will come back.
Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • 
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