Carolina Hurricanes: Three keys to beating the Bolts

Penalty kill wakes up

Carolina lost the last game on the back of a lot of penalties and a lot of bad penalty killing. These two things will see you lose almost any game in the National Hockey League. I’ve talked a lot before about the Canes needing to start on time, but the Canes penalty kill was not good enough in the last game for the team to continuously take stupid penalties.

Carolina will need to ward off a powerplay that absolutely ate them alive in the postseason, and this is without one of their best penalty killers. Obviously, the best treatment is usually prevention. Stay out of the box as much as possible, but that won’t always be possible. Keep the puck to the outside, deny the zone entry as much as possible and be aggressive.

Carolina’s penalty kill was 97% before the game against the Florida Panthers. It’s shown on multiple occasions that they know how to kill penalties. It’s going to be vital to get over the hump when penalized and get through without conceding as much as possible. The Talent is there and we know they can do it, but this is a difficult task.

That’s it, for now, folks, we’ll be back after the game with three takeaways but until then, thank you for reading and let’s go Canes!