Gold: Canes looking for carryover vs Seattle

By Adam Gold radio host 99.9 the Fan

Let’s be glad that this isn’t the last regular season home game in Rod Brind’Amour’s coaching career.

The Carolina Hurricanes found their game at the start of the 2nd period Friday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins and it was good enough to result in a 3-2 overtime victory. Andrei Svechnikov pushed them over the line, snapping up a loose puck in front of Pens’ goalie Casey DeSmith and putting it over his right shoulder for a game-winning, power play goal. As well as Andrei’s played, his 23rd marker of the season ended a 6-game goal drought and put the Canes back in the win column for the first time this week.

Now, we’ll see if the team that played the last 43 minutes against Pittsburgh shows up against Seattle.

The Hurricanes have the best record in the Eastern Conference at 38-12-5. But, they haven’t been consistently at their best for a while now. Thursday in Washington, on national television, the Hurricanes were utterly lifeless in a 4-0 loss to the Caps. And, I’m not sure Washington was really that good.

The next night, in the 1st period against the Pens, it was more of the same. Pittsburgh scored the 1st two goals and had a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes. Then the Captain put his sizeable skate down and Carolina went to work. Staal scored twice, the Canes took the game over and Svech’s overtime tally capped off a dominant response to the previous four periods.

Now, to do that for three periods.

The Hurricanes have just a dozen losses this year, but one of those came at the hands of the Seattle Kraken, the day before Thanksgiving at Climate Pledge Arena. The Canes had a 1-0 lead after the first period. But, Philipp Grubauer made 35 saves and the Kraken scratched out goals from Jared McCann and Marcus Johnasson as Seattle won for just the 6th time all year.

Fast forward to today and the Kraken are 17-35-5, last in the Pacific Division and chuggin towards the trade deadline in two weeks wondering how many players will still be in those uniforms in two weeks..

This will be the 5th game in the last 8 days for the Hurricanes. This stretch began with a 2-1 win over the Oilers last Sunday before stops in Detroit and Washington before Friday’s thriller with the Penguins. Carolina has appeared a little spent of late, but will get the next three days off before entertaining the explosive Colorado Avalanche on Thursday.

I’d be willing to wager that there will be two days off after Seattle leaves town.

After going 35 games and nearly 2 ½ months without a goal, Jordan Staal has now scored 6 in his last 11 games. May I suggest moving Staal’s locker in between Seth Jarvis and Martin Necas.

The Carolina rookie has gone 16 games without a goal, while Necas is 0 for his last 18 and has just 1 in his last 26. Those two droughts have contributed to a little dip in scoring. The Canes have averaged 3 goals per game in their last 16 after posting more than 3 ½ per over the first 39.

With that said, and the fact that the top line of Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen has produced just 2 even strength goals over the last 8 games, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Rod Brind’Amour split them up. There’s no doubt that they’ve played extremely well as a trio, but it just hasn’t translated on the scoreboard.

Meanwhile, because the head coach almost always gives the Staal line (with Nino Niederreiter and Jesper Fast) one of the top defensive assignments (see, Malkin, Evgeni and/or Draisaitl, Leon), that’s left Vincent Trocheck’s line to play against 3rd and 4th lines over the last two weeks. But, neither Necas nor Jarvis have been able to take advantage.

So, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Brind’Amour give the SAT line a break for a bit.

The Hurricanes recalled goalie Alex Lyon on an emergency basis from Chicago in the AHL and place Tony DeAngelo on the injured list. What we don’t know, as the Canes did not practice or have media availability on Saturday, is which of the two goaltenders is nicked up.

Antti Raanta was very good in the 3-2 win over the Penguins Friday night and there were a few physical moments in the game involving the netminder. But, he finished the game and nothing was mentioned afterwords, so…(shoulder shrug emoji).

McCann leads Seattle with 21 goals and 33 points in 48 games. Former Hurricanes Morgan Geekie (4) and Haydn Fleury (2) have combined for 6 goals for the Kraken.

Betting line: Hurricanes -320. O/U: 6.

Coverage begins on 99.9 the Fan at 6:30 with Storm Watch starring Alec Campbell. Mike Maniscalco and Tripp Tracy follow with the live play-by-play just after 7:00. Make sure to follow the Canes Corner Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. A new episode drops the #MorningAfter every Hurricanes game.