The Carolina Hurricanes failed to complete the four game home stand with a win against the ailing New Jersey Devils. Here are the takeaways from the tight loss.
The Carolina Hurricanes come into tonight’s game less than 24 hours after handing the Detroit Red Wings a heavy loss. The confidence in this team was extremely high. There was nothing they couldn’t do. They were just a single win away from completing a perfect home stand. Eight out of the Eight possible points at home.
All they had to do was take care of a New Jersey Devils team that has struggled to generate offense and was averaging over 4 GA per game. Tack on the fact that they have only won two games all season and the fact that they were just humiliated at home by the Flyers (who incidentally are the next matchup) this felt like an easy, no effort game to win.
Well it felt like that Carolina Hurricanes put no effort into the game. While they did hold the lead at two separate points in the first period and went into the locker room at the end of each period tied with their opponent, the entirety of the game, they were playing on their heels. They were forced to play outside of their comfort zone, and couldn’t force their style of play on the devils.
The results speak for themselves:
So what went wrong? Did the Carolina Hurricanes just go into this game with too much expectations or were they just gassed after the wild ride from the night before. The takeaways here aren’t all bad. There are some great one too. That said, there are some lessons to be learned from this game.
The good news is, of teams to lose to and learn lessons from, at least its a team that is currently not a threat to make the playoffs. In comparison to another playoff competitor who may edge us out on positioning.