The Canes are in for a fight in their playoff series, and not only with the Predators
Jake Bean smashed his stick across the crossbar in anger. For almost 95 minutes Friday night, the Carolina Hurricanes and Nashville Predators had been separated by the finest of margins, and the game was decided by an even smaller one.
Bean had a chance to knock a lofted puck down, or at least body Matt Duchene away from the net. But he swung and missed at the puck, and Duchene took the opportunity to gather it, move past Bean and flip the puck over a lunging Alex Nedeljkovic.
With that, the Hurricanes no longer had a chance to break the Predators’ spirit and take a 3-0 lead. They’re in for a fight now.
And if you listen to their coach, they already were in a fight: With the officiating.
The first two games of the series had been closer than the scorelines or the results indicated. With this 5-4 loss deep in the second overtime in a game that truly could have gone either way, now the series is that close as well. It’s 2-1, with Game 4 looming a mere 39 hours after end of the third-longest game in franchise history.
“It could have gone either way in that overtime,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “I thought we had a lot of good chances as well. It’s next game, next shift, next play and we’re going to go from there.”
Given those circumstances, the power-play disparity stands out like a neon sign on Nashville’s Broadway. The Predators have had 17 power plays to the Hurricanes’ 10, and that disparity would be more noticeable if the Hurricanes’ penalty-kill wasn’t so comprehensively competent. They have killed all but one in the series, and the one the Predators actually converted was a two-man advantage Friday night.
The Predators had seven power plays again Friday, including one in the second overtime that led indirectly to the winning goal. The teams were short-handed at almost exactly the same rate during the regular season, but for whatever reason, it’s been anything but even in this series.
Rod Brind’Amour, who was fined $25,000 last August for calling the NHL a “joke” and a Boston Bruins goal that was allowed to stand a “crime scene,” was simmering after Game 2, but boiled over after the agonizing finish to Game 3.
“We played our butts off,” Brind’Amour said. “We played great. We played hard. We’re playing a great team. I didn’t say it (to the team) but we’re in a battle. Nashville’s a phenomenal team but we’re also fighting the refs, plain and simple. You can’t tell me two games in a row, we get seven, eight penalties and they get three when the game’s this even? That’s not right. It’s not right.
“I give my guys tons of credit for sticking and going and playing their butts off. We still had a chance to win, coming back. It’s not right. Two overtimes, a knick-knack penalty when there’s stuff going on all over? Just flipped the momentum and they score the next shift after because we’re out of rotation. That’s not how it should go.”
Brind’Amour’s fine during the Hurricanes’ last playoff series carried with it a threat of another $25,000 “in the event of similar inappropriate behavior” over the next year. It will be interesting to see whether the NHL thinks his comments Friday night fit that description.
Whether Brind’Amour has to dip into his pocket or not, whether he’s right or not, the raw numbers behind his point are increasingly impossible to ignore. The old deliberate technical foul gambit can’t hurt here. Ah, the classics never go out of style.
But he’s right to be concerned, even if there’s a risk his players let it get into their heads: This series has been so painstakingly close on the ice, so hard-fought between two equally engaged teams, the penalty disparity is glaringly obvious as a massive outlier.
For all but 12 minutes and change of the first two games, the teams were separated by a goal or less, and that was true for all of Game 3. The Predators led three times in regulation, the Hurricanes once, and none of those leads was safe.
Multiple overtimes were probably vaguely inevitable at that point. It was that kind of game, that kind of night.
It’s now officially that kind of series.
This story was originally published May 22, 2021 at 12:20 AM with the headline "The Canes are in for a fight in their playoff series, and not only with the Predators."
