Hurricanes will dance this dance with the devil — at home, in a Game 7 — one more time
Take your pick. The Carolina Hurricanes are in their element — at home, in a Game 7 — or they’ve pushed their luck one step too far and the bill has come due.
Both are equally true in this moment. No one really knows. There’s only one way to find out.
What is also true, and unequivocal, is that this has been the strangest damn postseason in memory.
Maybe it’s always like this for the favored team in the playoffs, and it’s been so long since the Hurricanes truly faced the burden of expectations and weren’t just going around upsetting the natural order of things, breaking hearts in Montreal and Toronto and Montreal again, that we’ve all forgotten.
But both the first-round series against the Boston Bruins that went seven games and this series against the New York Rangers that has now gone seven games have been overwhelmed by an unpredictable predictability. Thanks to their unwillingness to lose at home and inability to win on the road, the Hurricanes are one win away from a rematch with the Tampa Bay Lightning in the conference final, despite a winning percentage and goal differential that would drop them to the draft lottery during the regular season.
This home-road business is not only unprecedented in NHL history, it’s tearing a swath through all of North American sports. Only the 2008 Boston Celtics had a longer run of it, 15 games — on their way to the NBA title, for what it’s worth.
At this point, as much as matchups do matter — and it’s a little crazy how the Jordan Staal line has assumed this impenetrable aura of invincibility at a time when the rest of the team struggles to find its footing on a nightly basis, sometimes at home, almost always on the road — it’s clearly a mental hurdle as much as anything.
There’s no rhyme or reason to it now, the way there was a few weeks ago. It’s opponent-independent. The Hurricanes are just a completely different team at home than they are on the road, in almost every respect. It’s almost as if they’re trying to find a different way to lose on the road each time — Antti Raanta’s number came up Saturday — because there’s absolutely no way to explain it.
“I think we’re dwelling on this home and away thing a little too much,” Hurricanes center Vincent Trocheck said. “It’s a hockey game when you get on the ice. You’re not really focusing whether you’re going back to your own bed after the game or going to a hotel.”
Everyone, coaches and players alike, is sick of talking about it, and for good reason, but there’s only one way to remove it from repeated consideration. And given the option, the Hurricanes would prefer being bored and exasperated by the ongoing discussion to being eliminated. Which are the two options on the table Monday.
As for the Game 7 streak that dates back to the 2006 Eastern Conference finals and has outlived Justin Williams’ tenure(s) with the team, there’s no rhyme or reason to that, either. They’ve won them at home and on the road, in regulation and in overtime, in the first round and in the last round, over a span of 17 seasons.
The core of this group has won a pair, the coach has been a part of all six of them in one way or another, but again, there’s not a common thread that connects any of it, which again suggests that chance has played as much of a role as anything. That bill is coming due as well, someday.
The Hurricanes pushed their luck in the first round and got away with it. They may well get away with it again Monday. (They should: As in the first round, they have been the better team five-on-five in this series, only to be undone by special teams and, in Game 6, goaltending.)
Neither of these unusual streaks are sustainable indefinitely. The larger the sample size, the more likely something goes wrong.
But the Hurricanes have danced this dance with the devil before, and if nothing else, they should feel confident and comfortable in this situation, putting their season on the line.
At home. In a Game 7. Again.
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This story was originally published May 30, 2022 at 5:42 AM with the headline "Hurricanes will dance this dance with the devil — at home, in a Game 7 — one more time."
