By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
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The Hurricanes play their most meaningful game of the season tonight. Unfortunately for them, it's meaningful in only one regard: the loser of tonight's game will remain out of the NHL's standings basement.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, and the attendant perpetual circus, come to town tonight for the first of two meetings in under two weeks. The Leafs are the only team separating the Hurricanes from last in the NHL, as both teams enter tonight's action with the princely sum of seven points on the season. The Hurricanes have played one more game, so they currently enter the game in 30th place, but one team is guaranteed to gain two points tonight and, thereby, move into 29th place without the help of tiebreakers.
For the Canes, the beat continues. Zach Boychuk was called up from Albany yesterday, ostensibly because of injuries to Tuomo Ruutu and Ray Whitney. Ruutu is likely to play, but Whitney will be out. That said, if Boychuk plays (and you'd imagine he will, as there might be a full-scale riot in the stands if he doesn't), the Canes will need to scratch someone else. Scuttlebutt among the press corps suggests there might be a surprise in store from Paul Maurice tonight.
Let the battle for the bottom begin...
Start 1st: No real surprises in the lineup. The other scratch tonight is Tim Conboy, so the lines, while looking a bit different, still contain the same players as Wednesday night in Florida, minus Whitney and adding Boychuk (who got a nice ovation in his first-ever starting lineup in Raleigh).
1:35 1st: Jason Blake got behind the Canes defense and it took a heroic save from Cam Ward to stretch his pad against the far post and keep the puck out of the net.
5:05 1st: One too many passes for the Canes. Jussi Jokinen had a clear path to the net with no defenseman checking him and Tuomo Ruutu on his right wing, but instead of taking a shot on Leafs goalie Jonas Gustavsson he attempted to pass to Ruutu. The pass, predictably, was detected by the defenseman playing the pass and neither player got a shot off.
6:15 1st: Boychuk nearly had his first, an attempt at a redirection of a Rod Brind'Amour pass on a power play, but the puck just barely missed him and sailed wide with no harm done.
7:51 1st: Canes lead 1-0; Sutter 1 (Brind'Amour, Corvo) Someone forgot to tell Brandon Sutter that the Canes can't score goals. Sutter's third in four games keeps him the only player to score a goal since the St. Louis game over a week ago, and he earned this one. Rod Brind'Amour took a shot from the point that looked like he partially whiffed on, and Sutter managed to corral the puck with his back to the Leafs' net, firing a backhand shot high over Gustavsson's glove to give the Canes a lead for the first time since the San Jose game on Sunday. (You'll recall they lost that game 5-1. Here's hoping history doesn't repeat itself.)
12:12 1st: Ah, the old "[name of goalie], you suck" cheer. Been a while since we've been privileged to hear that echo through the RBC.
13:40 1st: Should be tied at 1 now if not for that pesky near-side post. The Leafs' John Mitchell was the unlucky party, beating Ward but seeing the puck deflect straight off the iron.
17:22 1st: Canes lead 2-0; Samsonov 2 (Alberts, Jokinen) This is the result the Canes thought they'd get when they outshot the Florida Panthers 21-4 in the first period Wednesday night. A simple dump around the boards was touch-passed from Jokinen to Andrew Alberts, who slap-passed to Sergei Samsonov in the low slot with no one guarding him. Samsonov had all day to draw Gustavsson down to the ice, then fired high over Gustavsson's left shoulder to give the Canes their first two-goal lead in an eternity.
19:50 1st: Brind'Amour's turn to hit heavy metal, just before the period ended with, again, no one in the slot guarding him. He beat Gustavsson but not the near post.
End 1st: For a team that's struggled scoring goals, the Toronto Maple Leafs evidently are just what the doctor ordered. The Canes look fantastic, the passes to nobody have pretty much disappeared, and they've established a consistent forecheck repeatedly. Of course, that's helped by the fact that the Leafs look like they couldn't clear the zone if they tried, but at this point the Canes will gladly take it. Shots in the period were tied at 8, but that belies the Canes' long stretches of dominance, and I can't think of more than two good scoring chances from the Leafs all period.
1:12 2nd: Leafs make it 2-1; Mitchell 1 (Kaberle, Blake) It was only a matter of time that the Leafs scored, and their timing was great on their end. At the end of a long shift in the Canes' zone, Mitchell was on the receiving end of a point-to-point pass from Tomas Kaberle, and he wired a shot high that Ward was partially screened on to beat him high to the glove side. Ward would probably like to have that one back, but for the first time in forever his teammates have given him a margin for error.
4:15 2nd: According to the Canes' PR notes, including tonight the Leafs have given up the first goal in 13 of 14 games this year. Want a reason why they're parked with the Canes in the standings basement? Look no further.
6:55 2nd: Some relentless backchecking by the Leafs prevents the Canes from having a 2-on-none in the offensive zone. First Lee Stempniak got back to neutralize Scott Walker, and when Walker dropped a pass for Tom Kostopoulos the Leafs had Niklas Hagman back to tie Kostopoulos up and keep him from getting a shot off. At the other end, Tomas Kaberle took advantage of the two Canes forwards who were slow in getting back, and fired a tricky shot that Ward had to be quick to stop.
7:23 2nd: Leafs tie the game at 2; Kulemin 3 (Ponikarovsky, Grabovski) Well, that sure came out of nowhere. The play was basically created out of nothing by Alexei Ponikarovsky, who danced around a Canes' defender and centered to the slot from the far corner where no one expected him to make a play. Nikolai Kulemin was the lucky beneficiary, being in the right place at the right time to redirect Ponikarovsky's pass through Ward's legs and into the net to tie the game.
10:30 2nd: Could very easily be 3-2 Canes now. Ruutu and Samsonov got behind the Leafs' defense to start a 2-on-1, but the 1 was Ian White, who broke up the pass from Samsonov and kept Ruutu from getting a shot off. Frustrating, but predictable, no?
12:00 2nd: I know I'm jinxing it, but I don't care because it's rather noteworthy: the Canes, the most penalized team in the NHL, have yet to take a penalty, and we're more than halfway through the game.
13:00 2nd: Sutter had a great chance for his second of the night, but after Brind'Amour's pass found him with no one around Sutter's shot was snuffed out by Gustavsson's best save of the night, a kick save to the far corner.
14:45 2nd: Kessel caught the Canes in a line change, but fortunately for them the sniper fired wide, with Tim Gleason busting his rear end to get back to cover but not getting there quite in time.
15:37 2nd: And there ya have it: Alberts goes to the box for interference.
18:55 2nd: Boychuk used his speed to get behind the Leafs defense and nearly had a goal, deking on Gustavsson but backhanding a shot into the goaltender's pads. Could be argued that a penalty would have been called, but we move on...
End 2nd: Not the Canes' best period, but at least they showed some fight after the Toronto goals and never looked completely deflated. Boychuk will see that save in his nightmares, though. Shots in the period were even again at 10, and they're knotted at 18 for the game.
1:15 3rd: Boychuk with his third great chance of the night, but a point pass from Cole intended for Boychuk to tip home jumped his stick at the last minute and Gustavsson managed to kick the puck out.
3:09 3rd: Two straight chances for Chad LaRose rolled off his stick, and the second was a bonafide scoring chance that Gustavsson had no chance to stop if LaRose got everything on his shot. Unfortunately for the Canes, LaRose's stick flubbed on the ice and the puck rolled meekly into Gustafsson's glove.
4:35 3rd: Colton Orr had the Leafs' best chance of the night. You are reading that correctly. A rebound bounced right to him in front of the net with Ward out of position, but somehow Ward managed to stretch his right leg across the crease and deny Orr from giving the Leafs the lead.
5:45 3rd: Seconds after the officials earned the ire of the home fans for missing a pretty blatant hook in the neutral zone, Gustavsson robbed LaRose again on a tic-tac-toe passing play deep in the Leafs zone. LaRose will join Boychuk in seeing the big Swede in his nightmares tonight.
9:45 3rd: Gustavsson has the Canes' number tonight, at least since the first two goals. This time, it's his lateral movement that keeps the Canes from going up by one, denying Jussi Jokinen on a wraparound attempt with plenty of traffic in front of the net.
11:36 3rd: Leafs take a 3-2 lead; Blake 2 (Stempniak, Kessel) (pp) The comeback is complete. A few seconds after a shorthanded 2-on-1 was snuffed out by yet another Gustavsson stop, Lee Stempniak took a shot from the near point that bounced off Ward's pad and right to Jason Blake. Blake didn't miss, firing home a high shot to the short side that gave the Leafs their first lead all season after being down by two goals.
19:10 3rd: How bad has it gotten? The Canes came within a couple of inches of scoring into their own net. Wow.
End 3rd: The Canes sure came close at the end, with a power play in the final 20 seconds, but Gustavsson stood tall and gave the Leafs the lift out of the basement. He was by far the Leafs' best player, much to the Canes' chagrin, as they're now winless in 11 straight and have sole possession of the NHL's basement. Unbelievable...or maybe not so much. They just keep finding new ways to lose games, and it's understandably maddening.
Postgame: If it's possible to say such a thing in an eleven-game losing streak, the Canes deserved a better fate tonight. At some point they'll get some bounces to fall, but by then it might be too late to climb back out of the hole they've dug. More of the same in the locker room, as the players still have no answers and you can tell that they are sick and tired of answering "how difficult is this?" type questions after games. Unfortunately for them, those questions will continue until they figure out what the problem is, and how to fix it. Until then, the season will keep slipping further out of grasp, and they'll remain stuck in neutral.
No audio tonight. My recorder decided to make like the Canes and not pay attention to what it's supposed to do. Kinda dovetails with the way the season's gone, doesn't it?
The Canes now hit the road to face the Columbus Blue Jackets tomorrow night. We're going with them, for the first Live Blog Road Trip of the season. Join us at 6:30 tomorrow night from Nationwide Arena, as the Canes look to avoid a dozn losses in a row.
Friday, November 6, 2009
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