Carolina Hurricanes: 3 Takeaways from Goalie Duel vs. Tampa

Last night’s matchup against the Tampa Bay Lightning was a very tight game to say the least. A lot of good to take from it, and a lot of lessons to learn. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Carolina win in spectacular fashion, with a 1-0 win in overtime over the Bolts. This is a big win when you consider the magnitude of the two teams and what this could mean going forward between them. That doesn’t even take into consideration that the Canes were without 5 members of their starting roster.

There were great performances up and down the line-up. A goalie duel that was won by the Canes’ netminder, emergency replacements that stepped up to the mark and then some, and even a beacon of hope for a few players who underperformed drastically all of last season. There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad, but let’s just focus on the good for now.

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The only goal of the game came in overtime as Carolina move within two points of the division leading Nashville Predators. Now, due to the pandemic, there are a lot of teams with games in hand and so on. But the standings now look far better for the Canes than they did on Thursday morning. Wins are a must for the team moving forward, but they got a big one tonight before they play Dallas next.

So, as I stated earlier, there was a lot of good and a lot of bad. There was a lot of ill-discipline. There were a lot of wasted chances, specifically from big name players who you would expect to score far more often than they did, but that doesn’t matter right now. Right now, that two points without 33% of the forward core and one of the defenders is more important.

One thing I do want to mention before I dive into my three takeaways from this game is that this might have been the best game I’ve seen from Nino Niederreiter all season.  Yes, he’s had a better start to this season than he has had to previous years, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t an incredible game from him and really, his entire line looked very good throughout the game.

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Towards the end of the game, Tampa started to load up against that line trying to hit the Canes back when the Canes’ top line was running riot, but it was still a solid performance from this line and it might be a line we see in the long term just because it did look so great in this game here last night.

Now, let’s get into out takeaways shall we? There is a lot to talk about. This was a really well played game from the Carolina Hurricanes and, despite it being a rather shallow performance on the scoreboard, that was only the case because Tampa were doing their best to “Goalie” the Hurricanes and be the inferior team for 60 minutes and bag a last minute winner to get the heck out of dodge with two points.