Carolina Hurricanes: Go Duck Hunting, Win 4-1

The Carolina Hurricanes and the Anaheim Ducks played a dirty gritty game of hockey that waited until the third to be decided. We take a look back at a crazy game that closed out an ugly road trip in the golden state with a win and at least two points.

Is the pacific road trip curse over? Where has this grit and grind been for the last two games on this road trip? Do Finnish players play even better when in proximity to more and more Finnish players? Maybe, no idea, yes? The Carolina Hurricanes rolled into the Honda Center wearing their home reds against the Ducks’ home blacks. The Red v Black color rush was a nice touch that saw the Carolina Hurricanes take a bit of revenge against a team that spoiled their last Black Jersey night.

The Canes continue to bring in fresh talent from Charlotte to fill in where the injuries have taken their toll. This game brought in forward Saku Maenalanen and sniper/goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic to fill in for the injured Jordan Staal and Curtis McElhinney. Ned sat on the bench and watched Maenalanen make his presence felt in limited ice time. While not scoring any points, his play helped control the puck and set a pace for the game. At least for the Hurricanes.

The first goal of the game came while the Carolina Hurricanes were on the power play. Jakob Silfverberg found himself on a breakaway after plucking away a loose puck from the Hurricanes. His first shot ringed against the iron and was scooped up by Justin Williams who, despite being on the powerplay attempted to clear it out of the zone. The puck never left the zone and found its way onto the stick of Jake Dotchin who fired an absolute howitzer at the net where it clipped the skate of Silfverberg, who had skated into the right place and screened Petr Mrazek just enough for the puck to hit the back of the net. That touch of the skate gave Silfverberg his 100th career NHL goal.

That was all the scoring the Ducks would do that night as the Canes went back into the locker room and finally drank some coffee – or gatorade. Something good anyway, because when the second period started this was a brand new team. The Carolina Hurricanes responded with four unanswered goals and a whole lot of penalty killing to take the lead and win the game. Before I get into Carolina’s goals, let’s talk about these special teams.

The power play units still looked awful. Apparently we can either score 5v5 or on the power play. Never both. There were nine separate power plays (and 16 penalties!) in this game split 5-4 in Anaheim’s favor. While Carolina never got past John Gibson on any of these man advantages, Anaheim was also shutout by a stellar Carolina penalty kill. At one point after leading by two, they found themselves down two men for well over a minute. Perhaps there should be second and third looks taken at the film between now and Tuesday’s game against the Maple Leafs to learn from what went wrong on one end of the special teams, and what went right on the other.

Back to the goals: Clark Bishop scored the first NHL goal of his young career to tie the game. It came unassisted, as he stole a loose puck and forced it all the way to the net. Hampus Lindholm attempted to defend him only to end up tripping him and shoveling a mess of bodies and a puck sliding down the ice towards Gibson and the net. After a review of the play and a challenge of the play the end result was a good goal. That’s when the entire destiny of this game was reshaped.

The third period saw a bit more chaos as the penalties continued to rack up on both sides. But the Carolina Hurricanes got the last laugh as Brett Pesce received a beautiful pass from Teuvo Teravainen and slapped it past Gibson’s outstretched wings to give Carolina their first lead of the road trip. It was almost immediately answered by a greasy tip in of a goal by Justin Williams who kept his net front presence, maybe earning himself some forgiveness for committing two of the eight Carolina penalties.

It’s not a true Carolina Hurricanes win without a empty net goal by Sebastian Aho, who closed the door on a well-earned empty netter that ended up stirring up more chaos. Aho and Adam Henrique ended up drawing penalties off each other while Justin Faulk and Ryan Getzlaf hit the showers early for fighting each other. Or so I was told, didn’t really see much of a fight there. Gloves were dropped but I think only Getzlaf actually got a punch in before Faulk slipped and fell to the ice and the refs interfered.

Once again the Hurricanes collect at least a point while scoring at least three goals. The race to three storyline this year continues. With the two points collected in that game, they actually moved into third place in a Metro division that is failing to secure points outside of the division. If the Carolina Hurricanes can come back next week with some more wins, even the top of the division is still within grasp.

Question for CC Readers:

Is the addition of Maenalanen the answer to the need of a player that can jumpstart this team? If so, how do we keep him on the roster when Staal and Ferland get healthy?