Hurricanes keep saying they need to ‘get to their game’ quickly. Here’s what that means
The Carolina Hurricanes were on the ice at PNC Arena and back at practice Monday morning, still unsure of what comes next.
Would they be facing speedy Jack Hughes, old friend Dougie Hamilton and the New Jersey Devils in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs?
Or would it be Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Jacob Trouba — those guys — and the New York Rangers?
If the Canes had a preference, no one was saying, of course. Turns out, it will be the Devils, who dispatched the Rangers 4-0 in Game 7 of their series on Monday night. The first two games will be played at PNC Arena and the Canes again hold the home-ice advantage for the series.
Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said he planned to take in Devils-Rangers game, saying, “Game 7’s are fun to watch.”
Well, maybe not all Game 7’s. Brind’Amour saw the Rangers end the Canes’ season a year ago in a Game 7 at PNC Arena in the final game of that second-round series.
One constant theme Canes fans will hear from the players ill be the need to “get to our game.”
What is Canes’ game?
Sometimes that can happen quickly in a game, tying in to another pet hockey phrase: “starting on time.” In other games, it might take a period. Or two.
In their series-clinching 2-1 overtime win Friday over the New York Islanders, the Hurricanes players noted it took almost two periods to get to “their game.” Which begs the question: How does a team do that after not doing it for 40 minutes?
Paul Stastny, who scored the series-winning goal in OT, described it this way:
“Sometimes, it’s with faceoffs,” he said. “In the first half of the game we were struggling with faceoffs, then we started doing better. When you lose a faceoff clean, they start with the puck. If we’re in our (defensive) zone we’re stuck playing defense.
“Sometimes, it is execution. We have time, we try to make a play, we turn it over, they get to ‘their game’ first. Or you want to dump the puck in to the right spot or you dump it to the goalie, or we change at the wrong time … there’s a bunch of different factors and it’s a matter of half a second or a second and it changes the momentum of the shift. And a lot of it starts with faceoffs.”
For the first two periods in Game 6, the Islanders held a 1-0 lead, Cal Clutterbuck scoring in the first after a bad line change by the Canes. Their game is a structured, tight-checking, grinding style and the Isles were good at it.
“The first two periods we tried to do too much with the puck, which caused turnovers,” forward Seth Jarvis said “When you do that, it makes it really hard to sustain any offense.”
The Hurricanes won just 13 of 37 draws in the first two periods, but then 14 of 25 in the third. They had the puck more. They shot the puck more — 19 shots to the Isles’ five in the period.
Desperation as motivation
The Isles hunkered down with the lead in the third, relying on goalie Ilya Sorokin, but the Canes had the puck more and kept pushing, sending out line after line.
“When you’re on the bench and just rolling the lines, it seems like every time you get out there your team has possession and you roll off that,’ Stastny said “When you have momentum, the bench is easy because you’re just playing, playing, playing. You’re not even thinking. You’re just trying to copy what the line before did for you and take advantage of it, or help the next line after you.”
After goalie Frederik Andersen had done much of the hard work the first two periods, making 27 saves to keep it a one-goal game, the Canes tied the score 1-1 midway through the third on a Sebastian Aho goal.
“Yeah, we played our game in the third period but also we were forced to play our game, because we were more desperate and down a goal,” Stastny said. “Desperation is obviously a factor, as well.
“In every game there’s going to be times when the ice sort of tilts their way and the momentum shifts. If you can weather that storm, and it was only 1-0 (Friday) when it could have been 2-0 or 3-0, then it’s like, ‘OK, we’re only down a goal, we can get to our game, that’s the best they have.’ You often see it in the other team’s building because they feed off the crowd. It gets loud and you play on your heels a little and play cautious and they take advantage.”
The Hurricanes don’t want to wait so long, not in the playoffs, They want to be the team first to “their game” and the one dictating play. The first two games of the second-round series will be in their building and they want the other guys on their heels and cautious.
“You need all five guys dialed in, on the same page,” forward Martin Necas said Monday. “With us, it starts with our forecheck. But if the other team is always getting the puck out, it’s forecheck/backcheck, forecheck/backcheck and it’s tiring and you don’t get much O-zone time.
“But if you get off a couple of shots and you play in their zone and they’re not getting any offense but just playing defense, they feel tired. You feel good and refreshed. That’s how you get momentum in the playoffs.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2023 at 6:45 AM with the headline "Hurricanes keep saying they need to ‘get to their game’ quickly. Here’s what that means."
