Hurricanes close out preseason by getting up to speed for Wednesday’s opener
To play the way the Carolina Hurricanes play — and have to play to be successful — you can’t just flip a switch on opening night. The commitment has to begin long before that. It takes a while to get up to speed, like a semi-trailer working through the gears, and the Hurricanes continued to click through them Friday.
As meaningless as the preseason can be taken as a whole, for a Stanley Cup contender with few — if any — roster spots up for grabs, you still want to see that edge as it ends, especially against the Nashville Predators minus Juuse Saros.
And if noted preseason specialist Teuvo Teravainen is scoring goals and deflecting pucks all over the ice, there’s no question the regular season is nigh. The Hurricanes rose to this minor occasion with an 13-5 first-period shot advantage, Teravainen’s early goal and a successfully negated 80-second two-man advantage.
The rest of it was uneven at times, but it’s hard to muster 60 minutes of enthusiasm under these circumstances, and a pair of late goals and a sharp, ready-to-roll performance from Frederik Andersen gave the Hurricanes a 4-1 win and all the good vibes heading into Wednesday’s opener against the Ottawa Senators. Everything looks better, Roy Williams might have said if he were a hockey fan, when the puck goes in the net.
“We kind of knew, we’ve got to come here and just play hard like it’s a real game,” Teravainen said. “That’s the best way to get ready for the next game. I think we did a pretty good job with that. Everybody was — it’s still preseason — but I think we played pretty hard.”
This had all the earmarks of a dress rehearsal, right down to the Hurricanes’ new-look lineup with 11 forwards and seven defensemen dressed, not something Rod Brind’Amour has done often in the past but something we may see until Andrei Svechnikov makes his eventual return, an event for which he continues to wait impatiently in his yellow no-contact jersey.
It probably doesn’t bear repeating at this point that all the games the Hurricanes will play in October aren’t as important, combined, as a single game in April or May — barring some sort of improbable early collapse, the Hurricanes have fully transitioned into that mode after decades of scraping for every point — so there’s absolutely no rush to bring Svechnikov back. The more time he takes, the closer to 100 percent he is, the more tread will be left on his tires when the important games come.
Nevertheless, there are 82 to play first, and Friday offered the clearest picture yet of how the Hurricanes will play the first of them Wednesday. Most notably, new arrival Michael Bunting played in the prime location alongside Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis. That spot may be Svechnikov’s at some point, but the newcomer gets an early opportunity to do what he was signed to do: finish the chances those two create and cause (good) trouble.
An unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty from the bench checked one box Friday. Banging a Jarvis feed off the post facing a wide-open net left the other unchecked until Bunting scored the final goal off a faceoff.
Dmitri Orlov, meanwhile, begins the season as the best third-pairing defenseman in the NHL by a wide margin, testament to the Hurricanes’ uncommon defensive depth. Orlov’s little “shimmy-shake,” as Brind’Amour called it, sent a faked-out Nashville forward sliding past him into the neutral zone.
Having Orlov fifth on the depth chart is one reason they’ll play seven to start, Brind’Amour said. It hasn’t been his style, but Jalen Chatfield earned his spot last year and Brind’Amour wants Tony DeAngelo on the power play, so it’s hard to leave anyone out.
“We’ve got some really good D,” Brind’Amour said. “If we continue to do it that way for a while, that’s OK, we’ll figure it out. That kind of remains to be seen.”
And it’s a good sign that Teravainen, coming off a subpar season that was cut short by a broken thumb in the playoffs, was all over the ice. It’s too simplistic to say as Turbo goes the Hurricanes go, but they’re a different team when he’s playing to the limit of his ability, the kind of player who can be a force multiplier for everyone on the ice with him.
He appears ready, in the final year of his contract, to begin a pivotal season. So too do the Hurricanes, this final warm-up behind them, the season at hand and only opportunity ahead.
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This story was originally published October 6, 2023 at 11:01 PM with the headline "Hurricanes close out preseason by getting up to speed for Wednesday’s opener."
