By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
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We'll see history made at the RBC Center tonight. Either the Hurricanes will snap their 13-game winless skid tonight as they welcome the New York Islanders to Raleigh, scoring their first win in over a month, or they'll match a team record set in 1992, when the team was in Hartford, by going winless in fourteen straight games.
If the Canes break the streak, they'll do it with a lineup patched together with duct tape and rubber cement. Joni Pitkanen returns tonight from a one-game injury, but the Canes are still without Eric Staal and Cam Ward, and now they'll have to contend with losing Stephane Yelle (lower-body) after he blocked a shot killing a 5-on-3 on Wednesday night. Scott Walker is also questionable tonight, but it seems unlikely that he will play as well, so the lines are all jumbled up and no one's really sure what to expect.
The Islanders, former employers of Miroslav Satan, come to town boasting a 6-6-6 record on Friday the 13th, with the Canes trying to snap a 13-game losing streak. In other words, expect some bizarre things to happen tonight.
Here we go...
Pregame: As I'm sure you know by now, don't trust the hack reporter. Walker is in the lineup, but the Canes are still forced to skate seven defensemen as Tim Conboy will be in the press box tonight. Bryan Rodney will be the seventh defenseman, and it seems likely that either Matt Cullen or Brandon Sutter will double-shift with Walker and Tom Kostopoulos on the fourth line.
1:37 1st: The Canes look good so far. Maybe having the lines jumbled is a good thing, since they can just worry about playing hockey and not covering for whoever else is on their line. The Islanders, meanwhile, haven't had much to speak of after a minor flurry in the opening seconds.
2:54 1st: Remember where we said it could be a weird night? Tim Gleason is in the box for the next four minutes (or less) thanks to a double minor for roughing and unsportsmanlike conduct for mouthing off to referee Kevin Pollock.
3:38 1st: Islanders lead 1-0; Tavares 6 (Okposo, Nielsen) (pp) Yeah...so about that weird-night thing. John Tavares just scored one of the most bizarre goals you'll ever see, batting a carom off the rear boards that bounced right to the goal mouth out of midair and into the net behind Legace, who had no idea where the puck was.
5:35 1st: Islanders lead 2-0; Streit 4 (Gervais, Park) (pp) We've seen this script before, haven't we? Manny Legace gets caught playing too deep in his net and a seeing-eye shot from Mark Streit at the right point goes up high to Legace's stick side and beats him cleanly, with no one in front of the net. Paul Maurice looks...um, puzzled might be the right word.
12:15 1st: Who knew the Isles' power play was so lethal? They're taking the Canes to school with the extra attacker so far tonight. I know Stephane Yelle is a key component of the Canes' penalty kill, but seriously, if your kill goes down the toilet because it's missing Stephane Yelle, of all people, what does that say about the state of the team?
15:17 1st: We're approaching farce territory here. First Jussi Jokinen takes a goalie-interference penalty that really sets the locals' fire burning even more than it was already, and then Sean Bergenheim boards Joe Corvo behind the play, earning retaliation from Tim Gleason and negating what would have been the fourth Islanders power play of the period.
16:34 1st: Another this-is-your-team moment: Bryan Rodney is playing the point on a 4-on-3 power play.
End 1st: The Islanders have as many goals as the Canes have shots. I have no words. Shots 7-3 Isles in the period.
3:00 2nd: I feel like I'm in a bad horror movie. The Canes have no jump, no concern, they're making passes to nobody, they're skating in quicksand, and the Isles have hit three goalposts in addition to their three goals. Every game they sink to a new low. Unbelievable.
4:35 2nd: A few Bronx cheers dot the stands for an easy wrist shot from Brandon Sutter that Isles goalie Martin Biron had no trouble stopping.
5:25 2nd: If Sergei Samsonov got any mustard at all on a one-timer off a faceoff in the Isles' zone, the Canes would be on the board. Instead, he muffs the shot and it dribbles meekly onto Biron, who kicked it out with no problem whatsoever.
7:25 2nd: Seconds after bowling over Jack Hillen in the near corner, Chad LaRose had the Canes' best chance of the night. And, fittingly, the puck was kicked out by a Biron kick save with no harm done.
8:52 2nd: Canes score to make it 3-1; Ruutu 5 (Sutter, Rodney) Maybe putting Bryan Rodney on the power play wasn't such a bad move after all. A point shot from the defenseman playing his second game of the year was trapped but not covered by Biron, and Tuomo Ruutu scored his third in two games by cleaning up the garbage in front of the net.
11:17 2nd: Canes pull to within one at 3-2; Whitney 5 (Alberts, Ward) The Canes look like a different team after the Ruutu goal. They still aren't skating great, but at least their passes are hitting their mark, and a point-to-point pass from Andrew Alberts to Aaron Ward was deflected past Biron by Ray Whitney to give the building some life. The Canes look at least a little re-energized, and the crowd is definitely back in the game now.
16:50 2nd: How's this for a strange play? Niclas Wallin created a scoring chance by kicking the puck to Brandon Sutter while on his rear end. On the other side of the ice, Joni Pitkanen came close to firing a puck home from the far circle, but Biron snuffed it out with a glove save.
End 2nd: The Canes, despite playing in quicksand for the first 30 minutes, have a fine chance to tie the game as Blake Comeau is in the box for four minutes after high-sticking Erik Cole. The infraction actually happened a minute or so before the penalty was whistled, as both referees missed it and the linesman who caught it had to wait for a whistle to tell the referees what happened. Shots in the period, amazingly, were 14-6 Hurricanes, who led 17-13 overall.
3:20 3rd: The Canes did nothing with the four-minute power play, generating the princely sum of zero shots with the man advantage. Not exactly a resounding way to take control of the game there.
5:52 3rd: Legace hasn't gotten much of a test in a good bit, but he came up big on a Kyle Okposo wrist shot that he caught for a faceoff. Since self-destructing in the first period, giving up three goals on seven shots, he's recovered nicely to stop the last thirteen Islanders' shots.
7:45 3rd: After being on the mark with the majority of passes late in the second period, the Canes are back to passing the puck to no one in particular. Even on the power play, they couldn't connect on more than one pass in a row at a time, and the misery has continued after the man advantage ended.
9:45 3rd: LaRose delivers a crunching check to Brendan Witt in the far corner of the Islanders' zone, but LaRose gets the worst of it as he limps off the ice after twisting his leg on the followthrough.
14:01 3rd: Only 12 seconds after Jussi Jokinen takes a questionable holding call behind the Isles' net, Mark Streit returns the favor with a hold of his own on Rod Brind'Amour while the Canes' captain had a 1-on-3 in the offensive zone.
16:00 3rd: Gleason goes hard into the end boards behind the Canes' net and limps off the ice. Been that kind of night...
16:50 3rd: Trent Hunter takes a tricky wrist shot on a 2-on-1 that Legace has to be on top of things to keep out of the net.
17:29 3rd: Canes tie it at 3! Gleason 2 (Sutter, LaRose) The building just exploded. On a failure to clear the zone, Tim Gleason took a pass that pinballed around the Isles' zone for a few seconds and fired a shot very similar to Streit's goal in the first period that had no one in front of the net but somehow beat Biron to tie the game. If the Canes can keep this game tied and get a point, you have to think that they'll at least have started to turn the ball rolling the other way.
19:55 3rd: Matt Moulson was about half an inch away from tying the game when Legace lost the puck in the crease and every Canes fan's heart stopped beating. If the Canes had lost on that goal...
End 3rd: Going to watch the end of the game from ice level. I'll Tweet what happens from here on out.
Postgame: If you missed what happened, the Canes had spectacular chances to win the game in the extra session, the best being Bryan Rodney's shot from the high slot with about 1:30 remaining, but in the end the losing streak reaches 14 after Kyle Okposo ended the game with under a minute to go in overtime by beating Legace low to the stick side. A frustrating end to a somewhat positive night, and while it's kind of hard to take something good out of a game that handed your team their fourteenth straight loss the Canes were mildly upbeat in the locker room. They know they let one get away tonight, but they also showed a ton of resolve coming back from a three-goal hole, the first time in three seasons they've salvaged a point after being down by three.
While the details of the debate are sketchy because of the NHL's abandoning ties after the lockout, the Canes are the first team to lose fourteen straight games since the 1992-93 expansion Ottawa Senators. However, the Canes' 14-game winless streak is 0-10-4, while the Sens' was 0-14, so it's not a straight comparison. They still have a long way to go to reach the NHL record, which is a 30-game winless streak by the '80-81 Winnipeg Jets.
Click for locker room audio from Manny Legace, Brandon Sutter and Bryan Rodney. Paul Maurice's press conference is attached.
The Canes return to the ice Sunday afternoon as the Minnesota Wild pay a return engagement three weeks after the teams met in St. Paul. We'll be here at 1:30, and hope you will join us.
Friday, November 13, 2009
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