After a few days off to pause and exhale after a wild seven-day stretch for Carolina Hurricanes hockey, the team is back at it on Saturday. Last Wednesday saw Ron Francis ousted from the general manager position. Just when things seemed to settling back into a less dramatic routine, the team blew all four tires in imploding and converting a 4-1 third period lead into a 6-4 loss on Tuesday. The aftermath featured post-game interviews flabbergasted players with befuddled expressions and a lack of words to explain what happened and an agitated and verbally confrontational Bill Peters. The next day included more soul searching and a wait for what happened next. The answer was not much. An odd three-day layoff offered fans the possibility of just fleeing the scene of the 2017-18 season for the greener pastures of the NCAA basketball tourney. And the team had a day off and then a couple rounds of practice to try yet again to reset.
And that takes us to Saturday’s home match up against the Philadelphia Flyers. The game represents another potentially treacherous challenge against a good hockey team. But coming off of Tuesday’s debacle, this game is not about the opponent. Rather, it is about the Carolina Hurricanes and how it responds after yet another bad loss.
That search for what the Hurricanes are made of and how the team and individual players respond to another bout of adversity is the theme for my watch points for Saturday.
‘What I’m watching’ for the Carolina Hurricanes versus the Philadelphia Flyers
1) Intensity or self-doubt at the starting gate?
Maybe most interesting will be seeing what the vibe is to start the game. With three days off to digest a late-game collapse, will the team come out with its hair on fire looking to aggressively leave last Tuesday behind? Or will some amount of self-doubt be evident as the team carries but tries to leave Tuesday behind?
2) Individual player responses
Past the broader team response, Saturday’s game will also be one to watch how individual players, especially the leaders, respond. Do players wearing letters play with a noticeable physical edge and level of agitation? Or do they instead look like they are just ready to be done for 2017-18?
3) The response to adversity
There is no guarantee that it will happen on Saturday, but also worth watching is how the team responds next time it possesses a lead, especially a big one, and responds when scored upon.
For those who are still engaged and eager to get a read on character and a response to adversity, the high drama unfolds at 7:07pm Saturday night at PNC Arena.
Go Canes!
I truly wish that I could trust the data that everyone else seems to trust. But i cannot. I wish that I could have the fun you guys are having with these stats and analyzing players and even teams.
Wow! What a power rush!
But there are two problems which loom so large as to be impossible to ignore.
Problem 1 – When I worked selling variable contracts and mutual funds, we in sales were chastened constantly to always refer our clients to the prospectus and to remind them of the cold, hard fact that past performance is not in any way an indicator of performance in the future.
And that was in the field of finance. Finance, a field where everyone thinks that information is power. Yet, most times information isn’t enough. But insider information is. What is insider information? It is information about the second problem I have.
Problem 2- The human factor. Humans are difficult to quantify. We are because we are not machines. Jimmy Rutherford knew that and proved that when the motley crew he assembled over a few years came together and led the eastern conference all season, and won the Stanley Cup. None of the pundits picked us to do anything good. Ray Whitney? Cory Stillman? Mike Commodore, Martin Gerber, et al? Has beens. Eric Staal, Aaron Ward, Cam Ward, Justin Williams,Rod Brindamour, Bret Hedican, Eric Cole, et al? Never wases.
For what it’s worth, in the western conference, the Edmonton Oilers were much the same in their make up. They finished 8th in their conference. We went seven exciting games with them in the finals.
These were men who were men with something to prove to both themselves as well as the world. And prove it they did.
Wow! It was a great thing to watch. To be there!
Ronnie Francis has, over the years, put together a crew of the most impressive talent I have seen in a while. Sadly, he was removed from his job before he could enjoy the fruits of his labor.
But know this. Every piece he put into this masterpiece was put there for a purpose. To write them off now, based upon recent performance would be a mistake. The masterpiece is only missing one component.
Grit.
One or two players who accept the role of being the team’s lightning rods for hostile attention from enemy bullies, will complete the masterpiece. Players like Skinner, Aho, Teravainen, and Stempniak will be freed to score. McGinn, Kruger, Lindholm, Dahlbeck, DiGiuseppe will feel less shy. Slavin might find his mojo in the pk role. We might see Rask start to score, as Ronnie knew he could.
Grit on a team inspires the individuals on that team to great heights. The 2006 Canes had a lot of grit. They needed it. Every bit of it.
I agree that a little nastiness is missing … I was more than half-serious when I mentioned Dion Phaneuf at the trade deadline. Yes, he’s expensive, but OTT ate 25% of his salary and took Gaborik back, and he’s the kind of physical presence we could use in our own end. I’m not saying he was the perfect player, but someone with those attributes could really settle down our blue-line and help protect our younger skill players.
Not sure I agree with that painting of history.
The 2005-06 team was so successful largely because they went completely away from the grit/physical toughness/size version of the NHL.
Coming out of the lockout, the NHL decided to clamp down on the old school obstruction, holding, hooking and tackling sometimes that gave big, physical players an advantage. Suddenly, these things were all penalties. And the 2005-06 Hurricanes were built to thrive in this environment.
At a time when most teams still had an old school enforcer or two, the Hurricanes went completely without. And in a time when most teams were only beginning to add players who could play to the fourth line, the Hurricanes were ahead of the curve. And in terms of focusing on skating instead of physical toughness, that is where the Hurricanes benefited to the tune of a Stanley Cup by being early.
Over the two preceding offseasons, the Hurricanes cleared out a few size/grit type players and adding skill and skating in mass. Mike Commodore would be arguably the lone exception, but the other blue line addition was Frantisek Kaberle who rates 0/100 in physical play. The bigger change was at forward. In were Ray Whitney, Cory Stillman and Matt Cullen. All 3 are gamers but rate low for grit/physical play but incredibly high for skill and skating that would rule the day in the new NHL that started in 2005-06.
Laviolette’s style was to attack, attack, attack with speed and force the physical old school defenders to do what they did not know how to do — skate and defend without hooking, holding, tackling or whatever else.
And the Hurricanes thrived. The Canes and Sabres figured it out first and rode to a match up in the Eastern Conference Finals.
No doubt, physical play is and will always be a part of the NHL. But especially in the transition in 2005-06, speed, skating and skill ruled the day.
I think it is very hard for the team to muster up some kind of magic drive at this point.
They’ve been all but eliminated from the playoffs and the fans are getting increasingly apathetic. The players must be feeling the same.
I know I have no passion left for the season. I still enjoy hockey and will be watching the game, unless invited to some festivities, but I will not be edge of my seat excited hoping to win, in fact I hope the opposite.
I would have liked to see some AHL call ups audition for a job, something to remind me there’s always next season.
I do think the team is not far off, it is a couple of peces away from the playoffs, and I really hope we’ll see those pieces over the summer, but I really do not want to see a meaningless scoring streak from Skinner or Kruger stepping in and scoring 4 hat tricks by now, the season is el depositum est latrina (gone down the toilet in pig Latin), , and a run of wins would ruin the team’s draftpick chance and skew player evaluations like it did last year.
Here’s to a fun game that we can talk about but hopefully we can look good but lose.
Matt, I don’t wish to argue with you on your blog, so I won’t. But i will say that Commodore wasn’t the only Cane known for his toughness and grit in the 2005-06 season. Aaron Ward was hard as nails and very aggressive in the boards with his physicality. Nicky Wallin
was another known for his physical game. His teammates nicknamed him “king Kong ” because of his superior strength. Eric Cole, in addition to the fact that he was a great scorer, was very nasty to enemy players. He was especially nasty to those who took liberties with his linemate, Eric Staal. Cole paid the price for his aggressiveness about 2/3 through the 2005-06 season when Brooks Orpik ran him head first into the boards. Cole’s neck was broken. Cole was out for the season and most of the playoffs. He was sorely missed. He came back late in the series against Edmonton. His first game back rejuvenated his team’s spirit. Of course Edmonton gave him no slack. They sent out Raffi Torres. He went right after Cole’s head.
Lest we forget, Scotty Walker. He was a smallish guy who was known around the League as an agitator. He never hesitated to drop the gloves with guys more than twice his size. He was fast and provided secondary scoring, but his teammates felt safer for having him around. There were others who were scrappers, but they were only dangerous when messed with directly.
Pretty gritty.
And then, of course, in late 2006 Jimmy traded with the Kings to get Tim Gleason. Nobody on the planet would describe Gleason as anything other than big, tough and nasty.
“…they went completely away from the grit/physical/toughness/size
version of the NHL.”
Really? I think not.
In my opinion, the 2005-06 Cup team mirrors the 2017-18 Vegas Golden Knights in some ways. At the time, we had a few carry-overs from the 2002 playoff team, added a decent amount of guys who had something to prove they belong in the NHL (or prove they deserved greater roles), and of course an infusion of youth with Staal, Ward, LaRose.
Look at Vegas now, they compiled a team of castoffs with a spark to prove they belong, and also adding their own infusion of youth (especially Subban). Not overly physical but possessing enough grit.
That said, we were a one year wonder in 2006. But the similarities of how these two teams were built is pretty striking.
Hey Powerless…The best part about Canes and Coffee continues to be the diversity of opinions and the fact that people are able to disagree and debate things but in a friendly way. So no worries at all about disagreeing with my opinion.
I too was a fan of both Scott Walker and Tim Gleason for their throwback style, so we definitely agree on that, but both of them arrived after the 2005-06 season.