Four seasons of Hurricanes progress ends with Game 7 collapse to Rangers in Round 2
By the time the handshakes were finished, many of the seats had emptied, other than a few masochists and jubilant blue-clad New York Rangers fans chanting “Igor!” Not many people were interested in sticking around to applaud the Carolina Hurricanes’ season, abbreviated as it had suddenly become.
This was a missed opportunity, a precious chance squandered, and everyone knew it, from the ice on up.
It’s easy to say the Hurricanes will be back, a few more times at least with this group, but this was a good chance, as good as they might ever have, and they were nowhere close to rising to the moment before the really big moments even arrived.
This once-promising postseason ended Monday night with an embarrassing Game 7 loss and an unacceptably early exit, a 6-2 loss to the New York Rangers that started poorly and managed to get worse. For the first time since Rod Brind’Amour took over behind the bench, the Hurricanes’ steady upward climb has not only stopped, but regressed.
This wasn’t the catastrophe losing to Boston would have been, but it’s not all that far behind. It’s one thing to lose to an unequivocally superior opponent, as the Hurricanes did the past three postseasons. The same might have been true against the Tampa Bay Lightning again, if the Hurricanes have gotten that far — although at some point soon the Hurricanes are going to have to climb that mountain, if they’re ever going to climb it.
But this was different. The Hurricanes earned home-ice advantage in the regular season, were favored against both the Bruins and the Rangers, and another shot at the Lightning would and should have been a natural progression for this franchise.
It was time to move forward, to push ahead, to take the next step.
“Every year, this, when it ends, it’s always tough,’ Brind’Amour said. “Tougher maybe, because I felt like we were in a different spot this year. It wasn’t that I felt like we were better than anybody, but we weren’t worse. We were right there. That makes it a little tougher. And it’s another chance, I don’t want to say lost, but another year where you don’t get that chance.”
Instead, progress has stalled as they watched the Rangers go whooshing past. And why? Because many of the players on which this franchise’s success has been constructed failed to deliver when it mattered most.
Not just in Game 7, although that was certainly true of Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen and Vincent Trocheck and Martin Necas and Jesperi Kotkaniemi, but in all the road games this postseason where the Hurricanes had opportunity after opportunity and failed to convert.
The Hurricanes let the Bruins hang around and got away with it. They let the Rangers hang around and did not get away with it. They spent this entire postseason messing around. Monday, they found out.
Despite their record at home, despite their six straight Game 7 wins, anything can happen in one game.
Monday, most of the things that happened were very bad.
Like giving up two power-play goals in the first period while going 0-for-2 on their own opportunities. Like Seth Jarvis getting concussed by Jacon Trouba and Martin Necas jumping on the ice for a too-many-men penalty while Jarvis crawled back to the bench, or Antti Raanta tearing something — Groin? Knee? — so badly he had to be pushed off the ice.
As the maxim says, things can always get worse. Pyotr Kotchetkov made the first save after Raanta went down, Svechnikov whiffed at the end of an odd-man rush at the other end and the Rangers came down and scored to make it 3-0. For the first time this postseason, the Hurricanes really missed Frederik Andersen.
It was all over then but the handshakes.
“A seven-game series, you would think the right team wins,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “Our five-on-five play is there and I feel like we can play with anyone in the league and dominate. We found a way to beat ourselves.”
It’s easy to say this was a team capable of so much more, based on the way the regular season went, based on the hard-earned experience of the past three postseasons, but you are what your record says you are: 7-7 and a great disappointment, another wasted season with a core that still seems young … but the clock is surely ticking.
The defense was fine. The goaltending, even without Andersen, was fine until it wasn’t. But the young forwards who are supposed to be the most exciting part of this team utterly failed to deliver when it mattered most.
“Do we have elite goal-scorers? Maybe not. But we have great players,” Brind’Amour said. “We’re built a little differently than some other teams. That’s OK. You’ve got to play to your strengths. I think we did that and it didn’t work out. Going into tonight there were five teams playing. That says something. Obviously we’ve got to come back next year and be better.”
There are difficult decisions ahead, with what to do about Tony DeAngelo and Nino Niederreiter atop the list. Some, like Trocheck’s departure as a free agent and cutting bait with Necas, should be easier. But the hard question will still have to be asked: If these cornerstone players can’t beat the Rangers, are they really as good as the Hurricanes think they are?
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This story was originally published May 30, 2022 at 11:07 PM with the headline "Four seasons of Hurricanes progress ends with Game 7 collapse to Rangers in Round 2."
