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.

Lack of Intensity From Carolina

After failing on the comeback attempt in New York on Wednesday night where they saw themselves down 3-0 at one point, it was very important that Carolina came out of the gate strong. To be fair, they started well, but that quickly changed. Nashville played with the exact intensity that Carolina desperately needed, and the results definitely back that up.

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We can start by discussing the power play. Coming into tonight’s game, Carolina’s power play has been pretty good recently, good for 8th best in the league. They had three opportunities tonight and did not score. The first opportunity was easily the best, with Rinne standing on his head. As for the others, lifeless would be putting it lightly.

When it comes to 5-on-5 play, it was very one-sided, and certainly not in favor of the Carolina Hurricanes. While they had flashes of grade-A chances, they just couldn’t bury them. Besides those few chances, Carolina was very flat in this game. Nashville played to their strengths and had Carolina chasing nearly the entire game.

A quick look at the upcoming schedule will show just how important this game was for Carolina. With some tough opponents on the horizon, it was important to play a solid game and get a much needed two points against a team that has struggled this month. The Hurricanes failed to play with the needed intensity to win this hockey game and were outplayed in just about every facet of the game.