The Carolina Hurricanes played excellent hockey for most of the game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, yet were constantly frustrated by Bobrovsky as they attempted to come back from a bad first period.
You would be forgiven if you believed you were send back in time to the year 2018, where the Carolina Hurricanes knew how to fire shots on a goalie but not past him. It was that kind of game. In 60 minutes of gameplay they fired 46 shots on Sergei Bobrovsky getting none of them past the 30 year old Russian netminder. That steel curtain was enough to make up for awful play by the Blue Jackets for the next two periods.
At a first glance, it doesn’t seem like there is much to take away from this game, The Carolina Hurricanes were shutout and seem to be stuck in the rut that almost knocked them out of playoff contention by December before the New Year’s surge that brought them all the way back. But there are a three most important takeaways from this game, especially with the next game being against the Sabres tonight in PNC.
The Keys to winning that game are in a different article, for now know that to fully bounce back from last night’s game there needs to be an understanding of what came out of the game. Which elements to approach with a solution and which elements to keep yet still improve upon, because it wasn’t all bad. There are some good takeaways from last night, as hard as it is to believe given the score:
That all said, the first takeaway will be something that has bedeviled the team from perhaps, the very first game of the season against the New York Islanders. It’s now taken as a cliche, and perhaps even a scapegoat for cover up bad play from a team over the years, but in the case of a team as good as the Carolina Hurricanes, it’s actually true.