After a five-day layoff for the bye week, the Carolina Hurricanes are back on the ice Saturday night in Detroit to take on the Red Wings.
The next quick burst of four games in six days could be critical to the season. After losing two straight and limping into the bye week, the Hurricanes find themselves back at the bottom of the Metropolitan Division standings and two points (adjusted for games played) out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
The bye week was a bit later in the season in 2016-17 (February 12-16) but marked the unofficial end of the Canes’ playoff hopes last season. Just like this year, the Hurricanes stumbled in with two straight losses and then proceeded to go 1-3-2 through the end of February. The Hurricanes ultimately surged in March, but it was a case of too little too late.
In breaking down the Hurricanes January and February schedule on December 29, I grouped the upcoming stretch of four games together. The goal for the set is to successfully get the train back on the tracks and moving forward after the bye week without giving up more ground as happened in 2016-17. If the Hurricanes skid into February with another losing streak, the gap could again be too big to make up. If instead the Hurricanes can at least tread water in the next four games with three on the road, the ball will be on the tee for the team to use a stretch of 11 out of 12 at home to rise up the standings and into a playoff spot.
Against that backdrop, here are my watch points for Saturday’s return to action…
‘What I’m watching’ for the Carolina Hurricanes versus the Detroit Red Wings
1) Rested and ready? Or rusty?
As noted above, the bye week was hard on the Hurricanes and just about everyone else last week. The Hurricanes will be playing a Red Wings team that has been ‘meh’ at best thus far in 2017-18 with a record of 18-19-7, but the Wings also come in having played and practiced this week such that they should be up to game speed.
The question is whether the Hurricanes will look rested and ready after what seemed to be a well-timed break after a couple sluggish efforts before the break or whether the Hurricanes will look rusty.
Sebastian Aho is ‘out indefinitely’ with very few details on his status, but Brett Pesce and Derek Ryan both practiced on Friday in regular jerseys and seem likely to play after missing games prior to the break. After even longer layoffs for Pesce and Ryan, they will also be something to watch on Saturday.
2) Goaltending
In my Daily Cup of Joe for Friday that asked and answered, “What does it take for the Carolina Hurricanes to make the 2017-18 playoffs?” I said that…
If the Hurricanes do not get reasonably consistent league average or better goaltending for the remainder of the season, the chances of making the playoffs become incredibly slim.
As such, I think we have reached the point in the season when the goaltending is an every game watch point.
I have not seen anything naming a starter for Saturday, but regardless of who it is, the time is now to start stringing together a run of solid play in net.
3) Reconfigured forward lines minus Sebastian Aho
In recent weeks, Sebastian Aho had risen to become the Hurricanes most productive forward offensively. For a team that ranks 22nd in the NHL in goal scoring, losing a player who has led the way recently with 9 goals and 5 assists in his past 11 games is obviously a concern. Timing could not be better for Jeff Skinner to find his next goal scoring outburst and carry the team offensively at a critical point in the season. Same goes for everyone else as the team teeters on the edge of playoff chase relevancy in late January.
On Saturday, I will be watching to see if Bill Peters’ newly-configured lines can find a spark and/or if Jeff Skinner and others can find a higher gear in terms of producing offense.
The puck drops at 7pm on Fox Sports Carolinas with John, Tripp and Mike.
Go Canes!
I’ve complained about Skinner a good bit recently. He took his game up a notch after the Eric Staal trade a couple years back. He needs to step up similarly now. He’s too much of a net negative on this team when he’s not scoring. If he can’t carry the torch offensively now without our best player I really don’t know what the use of having him on the roster is, and think it’d be best if he was traded to get a mixup for both him and the team. Changes of sceneries do work in hockey, ask the aforementioned Eric Staal. This is an extremely winnable game. It would be great if we saw the guys come out with some fire and desperation. But you never know with this team. Sometimes I wonder if a coach that was a little more passionate would do this team some good. The Flames have been playing great hockey lately and their coach went nuts at a practice a couple weeks ago, chucking his stick over the boards into the rafters. Maybe a little bit of psycho-ness would bring out the fire in this team a little more. But who knows. I’m just looking for any strategy to change this team’s trajectory. What’s the definition of insanity? Do something differently, please.
Nasty and Passion are sadly lacking on this team, and it should be learned from the top down. I don’t see any signs of this AT ALL!
Hard for young players to learn this when the LEADERS, MGMT are lacking it, and /or discourage it!
I think the management team has passion, it’s just not Peters and Francis’ style to where hearts on the sleeve and I can respect that. The true heart and fire should come from your captains, which definitely lacks on our team. We need someone on the ice with mad dog eyes bulging out and infusing that energy onto his teammates…another Brind’Amour type.
The record of teams coming out of a bye week is horrendous and goalies in general seem to have difficulty getting back into rhythm after the week of inactivity. The Canes need a strong effort by whoever is going to be in goal to help squeeze out a win against a team that under normal circumstances, they should beat. Tricky game tonight.
I know what you mean by lack of passion. The perception we get as fans, from management, coaching and player interviews, is that mediocrity is acceptable, not just acceptable but expected almost.
I understand that nobody likes losing and people want to find excuses or explanations why they lost, but it just feels like losing is considered acceptable, because the team is in rebuild mode and will win at some point in the future. Nobody stands up and yells “look, come on guys, this is not acceptable”, at least not as us fans can see.
The closest we saw was the interview with JW after the horrendous game against Toronto.
I don’t see the fire, the will, the determination, the, for a lack of a better word, oompf.
I see players being comfortable not being the best and sitting pretty in Raleigh, out of the spotlight, collecting their paychecks.
I come from Iceland, the country that made a magic run in the 2016 European soccer championship where they knocked out England before losing to france in the quarter finals.
The team has repeated the impossible by making the 2018 World Championships.
The team does not have superstar talent (most of the players are playing on second and third division teams in mainland Europe, the team’s combined paychekcs totaled less than some of the players on the English team) but they have the never-say-die and never-give-up attitude that wears the opponents down.
That is the type of fire I want to see the Hurricanes display.
Without it they will not be a playoff team, not a winning team, not a team that the kids look up to and say “wow, I want to be just like them”.
It’s ok to lose when you are outmatched, but it is not ok to lose when you didn’t do your best, didn’t give it your 100%.
I did not see that effort from the canes in recent games, in fact I haven’t seen it for a long time.
The players have the talent and the fire is there, else they wouldn’t have made it to such a select group of athletes, but they need someone to be the guy that starts the fire (we can cal him the arsonist), and the management and coaching to help fan those flames.
That reminds me of the “MIRACLE ON ICE”…the U.S. winning in Lake Placid…!
That team of amateurs, BELIEVED IN THEMSELVES, partly because their coach BELIEVED…
I THINK THE SAME THING COULD HAPPEN HERE, IF…AND ONLY IF MGMT BUILDS A TEAM THAT IS ABLE TO…BELIEVE…!