Canes lose to a sparking goaltender again in defeat to the Minnesota Wild

In terms of annoying reoccurring themes, Carolina run into a goaltender that just seemed to shut them down. Unlike in years past, this time it was a little more acceptable. They ran into the reigning Vezina Trophy winner and a goaltender that is going to see him inducted into the hockey hall of fame when his career is over.  Good goalies can steal games and that’s what happened here. Normally, I’d be the first guy to scream and shout about this, but we don’t need to yet.

Let’s start off by laying out the obvious. This was not the best game Frederik Andersen has had as a member of the Carolina Hurricanes. He was the second-best goaltender in this game and we’ve not been able to say that too often about the great Dane. However, there were a couple of goals in this one that he would have been expected to stop and they just leaked through him tonight.

That being said, it would have required a shutout from Freddie to get a win in this one. There was not enough traffic getting to the front of the net to generate the goal support the Canes needed to aid Freddie in the pursuit of his 34th win of the year. Freddie was never given enough help, and part of that was due to Minnesota having a hot goalie, and some of it was due to wasteful play from the forwards.

Teuvo Teravainen took a puck up high during the second period, but being a hockey player, he appeared back on the bench for the third with a mouthful of stitches and a little bit of blood on his jersey. Yes, this dude took a puck to the face and was only out of the game for as long as it took for them to stitch him back up. Sometimes I wonder what part of the brain hockey players is missing.

Question for Cardiac Cane readers: What are you taking away from this game?