If you showed up looking for the recap for yesterday’s game, you can find that HERE.
After consecutive road losses, the Carolina Hurricanes entered a back-to-back set against the Washington Capitals desperately needing to win at least one out of two games. With a huge road win on Thursday in Washington, D.C, the Hurricanes have accomplished that already and will seek to do even better with a win or overtime loss on Friday.
With the Hurricanes pushing back up into the final Eastern Conference playoff spot and having only two games remaining before their bye week, now is not the time to exhale and be satisfied. Now is the time to empty the tank to try to build a small lead over the teams chasing them.
‘What I’m watching’ for the Carolina Hurricanes versus the Washington Capitals
1) The lineup
The game could offer some interesting personnel decisions for Coach Bill Peters. Lee Stempniak has been practicing, is said to be ready to go and was expected to play one of the two games against Washington. Since he did not play on Thursday, he seems like to make his season debut on Friday. Derek Ryan was injured late in Thursday’s game and did not return. His availability for Friday’s game was not known but could open up the slot needed to get Stempniak into the lineup. Brett Pesce, who was injured in practice on Thursday and did not play Friday, is another question mark. Finally, after a stellar outing and a big win on Thursday, might Peters go right back to Scott Darling in net? Best bet is that Peters sticks to the original plan to split the starts such that Ward plays on Friday but then that Peters goes right back to Darling for the pre-bye week finale on Sunday.
2) Energy level especially on the blue line
With Pesce out of the lineup and a close game on the road on Thursday, Peters used the third pairing of Klas Dahlbeck and Haydn Fleury lightly and leaned heavily on his top three defensemen of Jaccob Slavin, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Justin Faulk. Van Riemsdyk hit a season high for ice time. Slavin came really close to hitting a high too with his whopping 27+ minutes of ice time. Justin Faulk also played a bunch. On Friday, I will be watching to see if the Hurricanes in total but especially the defensemen can find their skating legs or if instead they look a step slow.
3) A repeat of Thursday’s performance defensively
After a run of inconsistent hockey defensively of late, the Hurricanes put together a more solid effort in Thursday’s win. The effort did allow a decent volume of shots but avoided break down type scoring chances and gave goalie Scott Darling a chance. On Friday, I will be watching to see if the Hurricanes can muster a repeat performance.
4) A desperate mentality despite a slight decrease in desperation
Hopefully, Thursday’s win does not cause the team exhale ever so slightly and take their foot off the gas. This is another good game for the leadership to rattle the saber a bit to make sure that everyone stays amped up and shows up ready to do whatever it takes to win more points in the standings. Especially after having played the night before and won, I will be watching closely to see if the Hurricanes show up with enough of a physical edge and willingness to outwork the Capitals to get results.
The puck drops at 7:37pm at PNC Arena.
Go Canes!
Stempniak is available at a time when it looks like the Canes need him. The hit on Ryan was borderline at best–expect he may need some time to be 100%. The Canes will need to stay disciplined tonight and not get caught up if Wilson and others play near that line again.
TVR was outstanding last night. Fleury didn’t get a lot of ice time, but he looked good on the PK. The D is still the key to making the playoffs–another game limiting entries and cleaning up pucks in front of the net will go a long way to sweeping the back-to-back.
D was much cleaner last night and the mixing of the pairs did not seem to create the normal chaos.
It will be interesting to see where Stempniak plays tonight. If Ryan can’t go, I hope they bring up Wallmark as I cannot see a Kruger 3rd line; Jooris 4th line center combo allowing us to be successful. I do hope Lee maybe plays a 4th line wing to ease him into the game.
I liked McGinn a lot last night. I had thought Williams would be mentoring Skinner, but he seems to be really making an impact with McGinn. I’ve always wondered if McGinn didn’t have more to give than 4th line and I think JW is really helping him find more chances.
This should give the Canes a little feel of what a playoff series feels like, let’s hope they respond.
They could do a Skinner/Lindholm/Stempniak line if they don’t want to call up Wallmark for whatever reason.
McGinn has definitely exceeded expectations for me this year. And the kid has been pounding the posts – when those shots start going in his contributions will have a significant impact.
I was also very happy to see the mixed up pairs perform well, and hope we can do it again on tired legs. This type of back-to-back is the most fair imaginable. The difference in tiredness should be driven mostly by a teams ability to maintain possession. Last night was bit unique due to the Pesce injury, mixed lines, and uneven playing time, but I look for our ability to drive possession to make a difference late in the game.
This is a really big game. Has the potential to be a point we look back on in April and say “that two game stretch right before the bye propelled us into the playoffs” if we can sweep the Caps in this mini series. Not only what it would do for us in the standings, but also for morale and confidence in the room. I almost wanna see Darling play again tonight, but if he did get the nod then had a bad game that would sting a bit. I like your plan to go back to him in the final pre-bye game. Also, I wonder if this team could benefit from Lucas Wallmark taking over the 4C slot and giving us some more offensive punch from our depth forwards. As Matt said last night, Elias Lindholm has been playing very well on the penalty kill, so Kruger hasn’t been playing in that role. He was brought here to be a PK specialist but offers absolutely no value offensively. Considering he’s not filling that role anymore either and is the most scored on forward we have on the PK, I think it could actually be a positive move in the long run. Then again we definitely would lose some of our defensive prowess in that scenario, but just an idea.
Let’s do it boys!!
My goodness that was a fun game to watch. I still think we win 4 of 7 in a playoff situation.
What the heck with the first WAS goal? Ward was pulled out of the crease for about 5 seconds.
The whole game has a stink cloud over it because of poor officiating.
Yeah we’d win this game 3 out of every 4 times.
I’m not one to often complain about the refs, but tonight the Caps had the equivalent of an extra man on the ice.
To me it looked like the first goal was a goalie interference, but I agree it was not the typical one. But the missed call on J Staal at a critical point in the game for what would have been a 4 minute powerplay is inexcusable.
Also Tom Wilson keeps getting license to run around and hit players without consequences, what’s up with that?
It was a depleted squad, the ending stung, and stung pretty good, and I don’t think we’ll put out the Flames on Sunday. But I do hope we can get a few days of rest and come back hungry and aggressive and make up for this unfortunate dry stretch against the top teams at a critical point. It’s not too late yet boys.