The Carolina Hurricanes Need to Win the Weekends

The Carolina Hurricanes are once again on the cusp of making the playoffs, but to do that they need to win several back to backs before season’s end.

The next six weekends including tonight will be back to back games for the Carolina Hurricanes. You read that correctly. Between now and the end of the regular season the Canes will be playing back to backs every single weekend.

To be fair the trend started last weekend as the Canes took on the Rangers and Leafs. The Rangers game was pretty forgettable and the Leafs game became one for the history books so we didn’t get much of a chance to talk about this. Especially when the trade deadline was right around the corner. But here we are now.

If you did the math you will realize that of the remaining twenty games, twelve will be part of those back to backs. That makes if a solid 60% of the remaining schedule, where each game is critical and with the way the Metro division has become, the most important period of hockey for playoff chances.

Kind of makes you curse whatever computer software makes these schedules.

But in all seriousness there is only a ten point difference between first and seventh in the division right now. That means, all things equal, there will be two teams that have a chance to make the playoffs that will get to sit out of summer hockey and wonder where it all went wrong.

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The Carolina Hurricanes are currently on the outside looking in with the suddenly hot New York Rangers. Seven of those back to back games will be against Metro opponents. The rest will be against Atlantic foes. These back to back games will make or break this team. You add on the injuries on this roster and you have a recipe for either disaster or heroics.

From now until the end of the season every weekend will be more important than the one before. The Canes cannot and will not be content with simply splitting those games. That would be 12 points given up. In a race where multiple 100+ point teams could miss the playoffs, every single point is critical. There is no room for shrugging off points lost because of back to backs.

The Carolina Hurricanes, in order to finish the season where they want to be, in a playoff spot, need to focus on winning as much as they can. That starts with the six back to back weekends coming up, starting tonight. There simply is no way to make it into the postseason otherwise.

Question For CC Readers: Which back to back weekend is the most important one in your opinion?