Special teams
Carolina’s coaches are among the best in the league. With the reigning Jack Adams winner behind the bench, this really cannot be argued. It’s really started to show so far this season how well the special teams’ units are performing. Both the powerplay and penalty kill have been excellent to start the marathon of a season.
We got to see three more powerplay goals in this game. With how deadly this first unit has become with the bumper play becoming one of the favorite moves of the unit to cause traffic before a point blast looks for tips to take the puck past a blinded netminder, it’s got so many different ways to hurt opponents.
I know it’s strange to be talking about how well the penalty kill has been performing considering the one goal the Canes gave up last night was a powerplay goal, but with that being a 5-on-3 goal, I think this is more than justified. Also, that call to make it a 5-on-3 just was not a penalty at all, and I think even the NHL officials knew that.
Short-handed, Carolina looks like they can still create chances. Against Montreal, there were chances for the captain. In this game against Columbus, Aho had a fantastic chance down a man. It really speaks to the resilience of the team to be able to create scoring chances for fun, even when there’s the pressure of being down a man. If the PK keeps performing at this level, Carolina will be dangerous.
That’s about everything from this game! The next game is the 25th of October when the Toronto Maple Leafs come to town for the first time since they were beaten by an American Hockey League Zamboni driver, but that’s something to talk about in the preview. Until then, thank you for reading, and LET’S GO CANES!