Carolina Hurricanes: Three Keys to a Game 3 Victory

The Power-Less Play

There aren’t too many negatives to say about a team in a 2-0 series lead and about one that is 6-1 in it’s last seven playoff games. But there’s a big glaring issue with this Carolina team right now despite the record in the last seven; their power play.

The power play hasn’t scored since Game 3 against Washington and is on a 0-19 drought. In this stretch has been a four minute opportunity and Game 2’s cringe worthy shot-less 1:35 of 5 on 3. To say the power play is in a funk is a massive understatement.

The strength of this team and it’s power play is the blue line. Simply shooting the puck more is not the answer, however.  Dougie Hamilton, Justin Faulk and Jaccob Slavin cannot create scoring opportunities without bodies in front of Robin Lehner.

This means more traffic from the Hurricane forwards like Jordan Staal, Justin Williams and Nino Niederreiter. While the game winner in Game 2 was not a power play goal, it’s a pretty good example of how the Hurricanes need to play on the power play.

https://twitter.com/NHLCanes/status/1122862729927241728

When Carolina works their offense through the blue line and gets bodies in front, good things happen. This also sets up rebounds and one-timers from Carolina’s skill players like Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen. Carolina has shown they can win without their power play, but eventually the issues coming with the extra man will bite them.

If Carolina can meet these three keys they will be prepared to do to the Islanders exactly what they did to the Penguins. If not, there might be a different story to game 4. Tonight they dictate if Friday is mop up duty or stopping the sinking of a boat.

Question for CC Readers: Is there any worries about Curtis McElhinney being the man between the pipes?