The Carolina Hurricanes defied the odds last night and overcame a two goal deficit to earn two points in the standings and regain their playoff positioning.
The Carolina Hurricanes started this game like they started their last three games, by giving up the first goal. They even doubled down and gave up a second goal. What happened next was completely out of character for this Hurricanes team that seemed to be on its way to another disappointing season of missing the playoffs.
This game started as if they looked at my three key article and said “pffff, yeah, lets do exactly the opposite of what this guy says”. They gave up the first goal, they continued their parade to the penalty box (five penalties, five), and played the kind of defense that continued to give James Reimer the opportunity to improve his saves above expected average.
We will talk about the defense later, but let me just say this, without a second period that saw them rip three unanswered goals from a line that we will also talk about later, this game is lost. Funny how a single frame of 20 minutes can make or break a hockey game.
Before we move on lets take a look at the rest of these stats:
A big bounce back win pic.twitter.com/nQuw0RtAnc
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) February 7, 2020
The biggest thing to point out here is the fact that Reimer’s workload was manageable even though most of the shots were once again from the slot and considered high quality chances. Add on the 13 blocked shots and Carolina’s defense seems to have cleaned up their act a little, which brings us to our first takeaway from the night.