Carolina Hurricanes Smothered by the Avalanche

The Carolina Hurricanes go 0 for 2 against worst team in NHL

After a hard fought win Sunday against the Arizona Coyotes,  Eddie Lack and the Carolina Hurricanes looked to finish up the road trip with all four possible points.  The Avs were in a different boat. Only able to score two goals in their last four games, Colorado found themselves on a four-game losing streak.

The big excitement of the night is the homecoming of Jaccob Slavin, who grew up in the area.  Can he continue his impressive sophomore season and his four-game point streak to lead the Canes to a win?  The answer to that would be yes as Slavin earns an assist on the Hurricanes lone goal to extend the streak to five.

With Phillip DiGiuseppe out with an upper-body injury, the Carolina Hurricanes also found themselves a man down as they only dressed eleven forwards and seven defensemen.  Many times this led to Bill Peters short shifting the Jordan Staal line.

The Game

The high energy start the Hurricanes wanted didn’t happen.  More importantly is that the Canes also didn’t let the Avs have much either.  Ryan Murphy who has been stringing together some really good games draws the first penalty.   With the man advantage, the Carolina Hurricanes score the first goal with a shot by Justin Faulk.  It would be his twelfth of the season and tied him for third in the NHL for goals by a defenseman.

As the game went on the two team went back and forth until this weird power play for the Hurricanes ended up with a NO goal.  For some reason, Bill Peters decided to challenge this one.  In keeping with tradition, Bill Peters lost to give him the same record on coaches challenges as the Washington Generals have against the HarlemGlobetrotterss

It wasn’t until the end of the second period when the wheels came off for Carolina.  First, it was a power play goal by Gabriel Landeskog.  (Potential future Cane?  Guess we have to wait for the summer and see).   Only 46 seconds later, Tyson Barrie scored the goal to take the lead.  The goal was Barrie’s sixth of the year and his second against the Hurricanes.  That’s right, 33.3% of Tyson Barrie’s goals have come against Carolina

That’s right, 33.3% of Tyson Barrie’s goals have come against Carolina.  Not quite sure if that’s a good or bad stat, so to be on the safe side let’s mark that one down as bad for the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Wrap

The Hurricanes went into Colorado with high hopes of gaining some much-needed points against the league’s worst team. Coach Bill Peters belief that fielding seven defensemen and not bringing in another forward caught up with the team in the 3^rd period.

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But if you are of the opinion that wins are bad, then this was the perfect game.  The Canes score a goal to make it somewhat entertaining and then failed to win meaning that draft position kept getting better.

It is important to mention that many of the Canes forwards were double shifted in second half of game. In the end, the Canes looked worn down and beaten.  It’s almost like they were playing an actual man down.  In the end the lack of depth meant the Canes couldn’t even compete with the worst team in the NHL.