Hurricanes Can’t Solve Rinne, Shut Out by Predators

The Carolina Hurricanes returned home to PNC Arena to face a hungry Central Division team. Backed by a tremendous effort in goal by Pekka Rinne, the Nashville Predators shut out the Carolina Hurricanes by the final score of 3-0. Let’s take a look at three takeaways from Friday’s game.

Coming off a rough 3-2 loss by the New York Rangers on Wednesday night, the Carolina Hurricanes needed a quality game to get back on track. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The Hurricanes struggled all night and failed to get much of anything going.

Early on, this seemed like it was going to be a goalie duel. Petr Mrazek and Pekka Rinne were both stopping everything that came their way. That was, until Rocco Grimaldi scored on what seemed like a harmless dump-out by Nick Bonino that broke the ice. The goal was scored at the 11:45 mark of the first period.

From there, Nashville continued to dominate. Whether it was the Predators’ defensemen that were blocking shots left and right or their forwards that were suffocating Carolina in the offensive zone, they were nearly unstoppable overall.

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As Nashville kept with their offensive possession, eventually holes were bound to be created in the Canes’ defensive efforts. This happened when Calle Jankrok scored from a perfect feed by Filip Forsberg. At this point, it’s 2-0 Nashville late in the first. With that, it just felt Carolina didn’t have a chance.

The game really felt sealed at the 16:32 mark of the 2nd period when Austin Watson scored a great deflection goal on what seemed like a harmless shot by Mattias Ekholm. The play was developed when Ekholm distanced himself from Jordan Martinook (who slipped while attempting to play around him).

This game is one Carolina will hope to soon forget. The entire game felt one-sided with little to no momentum throughout. What’s done is done, so let’s take a look at three takeaways from Friday night’s game.

Pekka Rinne was Unstoppable

You have to give credit where credit is due, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do tonight for Pekka Rinne. He was quite literally a brick wall, and it was clear early on that he wasn’t going to let anything get passed him tonight. He was sharp and set the tempo for the game. This was his 3rd shutout of the season and 58th of his career.

Rinne has been one of the best goaltenders in the league for many years, but going into tonight’s game, his numbers were not that great so far this season. To say he has struggled would be an understatement. Before his start in this game, he had a 8-4-2 record with a 3.06 GAA and a .889 SV%. Clearly, this is abnormal for a goalie of his caliber.

You can throw all of those number out of the window after this one. He stopped all 31 shots he faced and he made it look easy. It certainly wasn’t easy though, because Carolina had many fantastic opportunities to finally break the ice. One particular moment that stood out to me was a great sequence of saves by Rinne on Jordan Staal, who got two great opportunities on the net minder.

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Throughout the long NHL season, you are going to have games where the opposing teams goaltender seems virtually unstoppable. No matter what you do or how well you set up a play, it just seems like they are always one step ahead of you. Unfortunately for Carolina, this was one of those games and Rinne had a fantastic start in the crease.

Penalty Kill Continued to Dominate

This game was pretty bad overall, but instead of just focusing on the negative aspects of this game, there was one positive that I felt is definitely worth mentioning. The penalty kill was very good tonight. Something that has been a strength for Carolina for many seasons continued to show why in tonight’s game.

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Coming into tonight’s matchup against the Predators, Carolina’s penalty kill had successfully killed off 11 out of 13 total chances in the last 5 games. They were ranked 8th in the league, killing off 83.7% of the penalties they had taken. They needed the special teams to come up big in this one, and it was the penalty kill that shined for the team tonight, in a game where there wasn’t much of any positives overall.

The Hurricanes were very undisciplined in this game, taking too many penalties overall. The good thing is, the penalty kill came up big when it mattered. They successfully killed off all four penalties they took tonight and did so with relative ease. Nashville had some great looks on their first power play opportunity, but the most important penalty killer, Petr Mrazek, shut them down.

Even with Nashville’s power play not being very good so far this season, it’s always important to play any team strong when you’re down a man. Carolina definitely achieved that tonight, and it was certainly worthy of a mention. With all the negative things we can takeaway from this game, at least there was one positive aspect that continued to dominate.

Next Game: At Tampa Bay on November 30th