On Thursday night in Montreal, the Hurricanes won a fun one over the Canadiens. Jesperi scored his first goal as a Hurricane in the midst of a night of being booed. As I said on Twitter, I get it but still think it is unfortunate that he will become the focal point of a festering battle that really occurs in the executive offices.
All Jesperi Kotkaniemi did was accept a tremendous job offer that was probably 100% raise.
Any ire (which is fine) should be at management level not directed at 21-year old kid. Best is to get this over with and move on.
But if it must be so, let's get him a goal and 2 points!
— Canes and Coffee (@CanesandCoffee) October 21, 2021
But at least the result was favorable.
Below are my quick notes on the Canes 4-1.
1) The effect of having offensive fire power
This game reminded me of quite a few wins last season in which the story of the game was the Hurricanes top scorers capitalizing when given the chance. Sebastian Aho had a strong game netting a goal on a pretty snipe. Andrei Svechnikov finished into the tiniest of openings from a tough angle. And suddenly the Hurricanes were on their way to posting three goals (not counting the empty-netter) and riding them to a win. The Hurricanes were not bad, but the team was not great either. But the ability to put the puck in the net trumps all else on many nights in NHL.
2) Frederik Andersen
Andersen followed up a strong outing in game 2 with another on Thursday. The Hurricanes skaters seemed to quit early after stretching the fourth period lead to 3-1. From that point forward, Andersen was a one-man wall making a couple great scrambling saves. One thing that has come to the forefront in the past couple games is his ability to make athletic saves when needed. No doubt his bread and butter is being big and positionally sound leaving little to shoot at, but he has shown an ability to make an acrobatic save when needed too.
3) Intermittently sloppy night for the blue line
Hidden a bit behind what looked like an easy win on the scoreboard was an intermittently sloppy night for the blue line. Ian Cole let the puck get behind him on the blue line leading to a penalty against at the other end by Tony DeAngelo. DeAngelo had his own ‘oops’ in the third period. Brett Pesce was sort of in the right place but not really defending on the Toffoli goal. Ethan Bear turned the puck over just inside the defensive blue line. And just in general the blue line had a few too many errors that would have been more noticeable had a few more ending up in the Canes net.
4) Jesperi Kotkaniemi
Good for him! So happy he was able to get on the score sheet after having to listen to the boos all night.
5) Niederreiter/Staal/Fast
Staal’s line will be overshadowed on the score sheet most nights, but so far in the 2021-22 season the trio is a huge part of the team’s depth. They are sound defensively, a handful physically and capable of decent depth scoring to boot. The biggest benefit of having a strong third line can be the second line seeing more shifts with favorable match ups and scoring more because of it.
Next up for the Hurricanes is a Saturday road game in Columbus.
Go Canes!
It was a fun game. The game was a lot closer than the score indicates for sure, and we had a few “save us Freddie” moments in the third, and he came up big. I’ve had my doubts about this signing, I thought Rontaa was the smart portion of it, but so far Anderson has played great, definitely stolen one game flat out for us and in this one he definitely did his bit.
Great to see Kotkaniemi net his first. I did say (somewhere on the boards) that this would be the ideal game for him to net his first and he should be dialed in.
This is definitely a game that we would have lost 81 times out of 82 in the 2013/2018 seasons but the development of high-end talent capable of scoring timely goals has made such an enormous difference.
It was a WIN. It wasn’t particularly well played other than Frederik’s play. Just a “meh” type performance otherwise. Play like this against say a Washington and we don’t get two points IMO.
Good to see KK get a goal. Don’t know why Canadians fans are booing KK. They should be focused on their front office for not matching Canes offer sheet if they wanted KK so bad. KK would have to be stupid not to accept the Canes offer. Smart kid…dumb Canadian front office.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Kotkaniemi getting booed. Comes with the territory. He got to play the heel and come out on top. Probably cost him some cash, but he can afford that too.
Winning when you aren’t at your best is what good teams do. Glad to see the Canes doing it early in the season.
Also glad to see Anderson playing well. Maybe these guys in the front office actually know what they are doing?
Was fun to watch (but, really, aren’t they all :)). It was sloppy at times for the D… some placements being a little off, some passes being a little off. I kept telling myself, this is the 3rd game of the season, no real preseason games for this group as a whole, and we had a 4 day layoff. That long of a layoff causes problems (sometimes) even in the middle of the season. The good thing about the D, was even though some passes were off, the passes were made. I see that as a good thing. The D ARE seeing the ice and making the correct plays.
The pass from ? to Aho was great. Aho’s shot was great, but to me what made the play was Trocheck faking on the shot and letting it go to Aho. In my mind, that froze the goalie just enough to give Aho an opening… and wow did he Finish finish! Also, the goal from Svech was also a thing of beauty. Was there even space for the puck at that angle?
I also really like the 4th line. Stepan is all over the place. Marty had some great plays, like the one (in the 3rd???) where he went behind the net and took to puck away from the Habs.
I know there will be moments, remember when Buffalo won 10 games in a row… but this team is looking really good. And we have a few prospects (Jarvis, Drury, Rees, others) that look promising.
So happy hockey is back and our team has the character that makes us proud to be a fan!
I was so happy to see KK get a goal. That is what fans do, boo the player that moved. I bet that happens with Hamilton when NJ comes to town. I will not be part of that. The Montreal fans kind of deserved that goal being scored. KK, who had been kind of MIA was clearly ready to go. By far his most complete game. I agree, more of an executive level thing. Who would not take that contract.
Freddie has been very good. He is shining. He has been making up for the D mistakes. I sill think our D is very good, starting up issues. This is only the third game with a lot of off days in between. I think the team has been great, no passengers. The guys who do not show up on the scoresheet are still contributing big time.
I also have to point out the title of the blog, reminding us that both Aho and JK are “former Canadiens”. Nicely done, Matt!