Hurricanes players cope with disappointment of their season ending after Game 7 loss
The Carolina Hurricanes players and coaches were at PNC Arena on Wednesday, but not for a morning skate or to prepare for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Canes’ season is over. The New York Rangers saw to that Monday by winning Game 7 of the second-round playoff series. All that’s left for the Canes are the players’ end-of-season meetings with management and exit interviews with the media.
Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour was on the ice, but he was working with his son, Skyler. The sound of their skates and sticks all but echoed in the empty arena.
For most of the Canes players, the feeling bordered on surreal. In their minds, the Eastern Conference final should have started Wednesday night with Game 1 between the Canes and Lightning and PNC Arena full and loud.
“I still can’t believe that it’s over,” forward Teuvo Teravainen said.
To which defenseman Brett Pesce added, “To be honest, I still feel like we have a game today.”
At the same time, Pesce knows why the Canes don’t have a game to play saying, “The best teams find ways to win, no matter how you do it, and we didn’t do that.”
Two days after the fact, after the 6-2 loss to the Rangers, the players still were coming to grips with their Game 7 failure, with having their Stanley Cup hopes cruelly come to an end.
There was some news Wednesday: goalie Frederik Andersen said he suffered an MCL tear in the April 16 games at Colorado. He also said had the Canes gotten past the Rangers — and with goalie Antti Raanta injured in Game 7 — he might have been able to return and play.
“I was getting real close,” Andersen said Wednesday. “That adds to the bitterness and frustration about losing.”
Sebastian Aho said the “anger” from it will drive him through the summer workouts in Finland, adding to his motivation. Andrei Svechnikov and others said much the same.
“When we played that last game, no one would have believed this would be over,” Svechnikov said. “We thought we were going to win that game and we’re going to go farther. That’s very frustrating and (I’m) still feeling pretty bad.”
But that’s only a part of winning a Cup, defenseman Ian Cole said. It takes more than hard work and the drive to win.
Cole won two Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins. As a part of championship teams, he has a grasp on what separates those who win Cups and those who want to win Cups.
“The sour taste in mouths at the end of the season will overshadow anything positive,” he said. “I think there were a lot of good things, definitely. But ultimately we lost. We didn’t win.
“I think it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, we had a really good year, that was great, good job guys.’ But ultimately it doesn’t really matter how good the year is unless you win the Stanley Cup. Everyone always says, ‘We’ll get ‘em next year, get ‘em next year,’ but there’s only so many next years and so many opportunities you get to have a really good hockey team to take advantage of a really good position with a great home record and all the things lined up for us.”
The Canes won the first games of the opening round against Boston at PNC Arena, but needed seven games to win the series. They did the same against the Rangers, but fell short in Game 7. In neither series could they win a road game.
“Being able to recognize the situation and the level of desperation you need to play with to win consistently in the playoffs was not there,” Cole said. “That is disappointing. I think over time guys will realize how hard it is to win. People can say it but until you do it …
“I think it manifests itself in the teams that had to lose significantly to become good hockey teams that have won – you look at Washington or St. Louis. There’s no better way to learn than to lose. I just wish we could have learned on the fly rather than have to lose to learn those hard lessons ... At some point we’re going to have to realize that this is really hard.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 2:01 PM with the headline "Hurricanes players cope with disappointment of their season ending after Game 7 loss."
