Carolina Hurricanes: Recap of the weekend’s back-to-back games

The Carolina Hurricanes faced a challenging home back-to-back pair of games this weekend, facing the Columbus Blue Jackets and the New Jersey Devils. Let’s see how they fared as we recap the weekend’s action.

A weekend back-to-back is a rare and glorious thing in the NHL, more so when both games are home games against eminently beatable opposition. The Blue Jackets topped the Metro Division before the game, but had already lost at home to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 2 of the season; the Devils were one of three teams below the Canes in the standings and are clearly struggling to replicate last season’s surprising run to the playoffs.

So, how did our beloved Canes fare?

Saturday: 4-1 loss to CBJ

Oh dear. With a well-rested team, and five points from six, the Canes limped to a lackluster 4-1 defeat, with speedster Cam Atkinson posting a hat-trick and an assist to feature on all four BJs goals. There were few highlights for the Canes, with Sebastian Aho – who else – scoring the team’s only goal and Scott Darling posting a disappointing SV% of .833, as he let in a couple of softies. How did captain Justin Williams see the capitulation?

“It was a dud,” Williams said. “Just call it what it was. A dud. And certainly unacceptable.”

Special teams were a let down on Saturday, as is becoming the case more and more as the season goes on. The PP went 0/3 and the PK went 80%, shutting down 4/5 opportunities for the BJs. Not that stopping that powerplay goal would have made any difference in the greater scheme of things; the Canes still outshot the BJs by 31-24 and went 54% in the faceoff circle, yet still came away with a loss that could have been more. Chalk this one up as simply the latest game in which the Canes outshot their opponents. For once, that forward group could not make up for the team’s defensive deficiencies.

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The main positive from the game was Aho’s goal, which took him to 6-17-23 in just 19 games for the season but also took him to a career total of 59 goals. It seems like yesterday that he was in his rookie campaign, and now he’s taking the team by the scruff of the neck and dragging them along for the ride. This is some player we have, and one can’t help but wonder how much better he’d be with someone like William Nylander to play alongside.

Sunday: 2-1 win over NJD

The Canes joined a select group with this win last night, becoming only the sixth team since the NHL began to score twice in the opening 30 seconds of a game. Justin Williams‘ second goal of the season came just 22 seconds in, and was followed eight seconds later by team leader Micheal Ferland‘s 10th of the season. That proved to be enough, as some stalwart defense and some excellent saves from Curtis McElhinney kept the Devils at bay through a scoreless 2nd and 3rd. It is worth noting that the Canes are yet to record a shutout this season, a run that goes back to 1 February 2018 – 51 games and counting.

In terms of positives, McElhinney’s save percentage for the season now matches that of Scott Darling at .903; Ferland is now almost halfway to his career-best of 21 goals, set last season in Calgary; Williams scored his first goal in 15 games, and Jordan Staal picked up his first point in seven games. Special teams were a mixed bag – an impotent 0/3 powerplay (for the second day running) was made up for by a perfect 3/3 PK – but the team won the battle on the dot, going 51%. This team can get the job done, but they love doing it the hard way. Check out these quotes from RBA:

“That’s the game…they had their two worst shifts of the game to start the game, and it benefitted us. We got the win…at the end of the day, it was a battle game. I thought our best players tonight were our veteran guys.”

This was also just the second time this season that the Canes have been out-shot – 34-25 in this case – and the team has won both games, in part thanks to stellar goaltending from first Darling, then McElhinney. Out-shooting the opposition 18/20 times hasn’t helped the Canes win many hockey games – perhaps less shots, but better quality shots, and decent goaltending is how you win games? Food for thought at least.

And so the back-to-back is over, and the Canes are now doing to us what they seemingly always do, win a few, lose a few, then go on a protracted win-lose-win-lose streak. Rod Brind’Amour needs to figure out how to peg together a winning streak, because no team makes the playoffs playing .500 hockey. He has the talent at his disposal to do so – let’s hope we see a breakthrough very soon.

Question for CC readers:

How do you see the team performing this coming week, with games against the Maple Leafs, Panthers and the Islanders?