The Two-Line Pass

Here is the Good night I wrote on last night’s Canes/Flyers game after my power went out, as my computer battery was dying, and without an internet connection. Thus, all opinions on this game are not fact-checked and therefore should not be expected to be anything approaching what experts would call “accurate.” Enjoy your weekend.

The Lead

Paul Maurice and the Carolina Hurricanes deserve eachother.

In the few games since Maurice has taken over the ‘Canes’ coaching duties, they have, like the Toronto teams he coached before getting fired, not played a full 60 minutes. The fact that they had a four-goal lead on the Flyers early in the second period and still lost 6-5 in a shootout tells you everything you need to know about where this team is going to be once the playoffs roll around. Hint: Not in them.

The ‘Canes got a goal from Eric Staal just 61 seconds into the game and had additional scores from Sergei Samsonov, Matt Cullen, Joni Pitkanen and Staal again all wrapped around a Scott Hartnell tally and the game seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be over very, very early. Anterro Nittymaki was fighting the puck, and had been all night, and was getting no help from either his defense to turn aside the great number of shots he was facing, or the offense to at least chip away at the lead.

But when Staal scored his second of the game to make it 5-1, Carolina just stopped playing. They sat and watched as Hartnell scored again to make it 5-2 in the third period and then completed his hat trick mere minutes later to cut the Hurricane lead to two. When Scottie Upshall scored not long after that, someone should have been been begging Maurice to use his timeout. The Flyers, on their home ice, were surging and the crowd, which had been pretty much silent right from the first Carolina goal, was now alive. They and their team had sniffed blood on the Hartnell hattie, but tasted of it when Upshall shoveled it past Mark Leighton.

But Maurice just stood there behind the Carolina bench, arms folded as ineffectually as his team’s play. That signature “I am gravely disappointed in this team” look was creeping onto his face once again. So when the Hurricanes gave Philly a late power play and Simon Gagne chipped in a garbage goal from the side of the net to even the game, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in the building was shocked. The Hurricanes, after all, had not only let a team that had lost just once in regulation in its last 10 games up off the mat, it performed a full-on necromancy of that team and the entire crowd along with it. Where once there was death, there was now nothing but life, and the only astonishing part about it was that the ‘Canes didn’t give up the game-winner soon after and lose in regulation.

They at least got it to overtime and, despite Philadelphia taking a penalty to make it 4-on-3 for the final few moments, failed to at least salvage an overtime win. The shootout, obviously, was a no-doubter. Both of Philadelphia’s first two shooters scored, and Niitymaki fittingly stopped both Hurricanes shooters.

There might be a little bit of talk in the papers about how the ‘Canes played well enough to win, but they didn’t. It was just another game where they, like Eric Staal often does, didn’t play a full 60. Heck, a full 40 might’ve been enough to win the game given how lifeless Philadelphia looked for half the game. The point is that no team in the NHL should ever, ever lose a game it leads by four goals. Drop all five guys behind the blue line if you want, who cares? The Hurricanes need wins and this has to have been worse than any loss Peter Laviolette went through this year. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a Hurricanes fan right now. This team is not only getting bad breaks off the ice (the ineptitude of the front office, the injuries, etc.) but now they can’t even win a game where they put up a five-spot and lead by four? That’s mortifying.

Just take the flag on the front of those hideous black jerseys and paint the whole thing white. Your season’s over.

Elsewhere…

Pittsburgh 9, New York Islanders 2
Not a good night to be an Islander goalie. Both Petr Sykora and Pascal Dupuis had the first hat tricks of their career and something like 46 other Penguins had multiple-point nights. Johnny Curry, who was once a walk-on at Boston University, played very well to pick up the win. Some of the saves he made were pretty solid. And just in case you were wondering, Sid Crosby still kills the Isles.

Columbus 2, Nashville 1
Finally, Steve Mason got some help. The kid was making tons of high-quality saves against the Predators and kept the Blue Jackets in a game they would have otherwise lost, but it wasn’t until late in the third period that both Mike Commodore and Rick Nash scored to secure the win. Poor Mason shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this.

(That’s all I saw for finals, and I’m not sure that Columbus score is right.)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.