By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
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Hope you're good and stuffed from Thanksgiving, because the Hurricanes will do their best to avoid serving up a second turkey tonight.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
The Canes return home tonight after a two-game trip to Dallas and Anaheim netted them zero points, and tonight they face the Atlanta Thrashers for the first time this season before heading to Buffalo for a game tomorrow. The Thrashers aren't a team to be taken lightly, as they sit second in the Southeast Division with 25 points despite playing over two weeks without captain and resident All-Star Ilya Kovalchuk. A couple of reclamation projects in Rich Peverley (1st) and Maxim Afinogenov (3rd in team scoring) have propelled the Thrashers way beyond where anyone thought they'd be a quarter into the season, and the Canes will have their hands full to slow down the Thrashers' attack tonight.
Manny Legace will get the start again for the Canes, though Michael Leighton (groin) has been activated off injured reserve and will back up Legace tonight. Eric Staal will make his first appearance at the RBC Center in almost a month, after missing ten games with an abdominal injury and returning to the lineup Wednesday night in Anaheim. Cam Ward, though, is still out and is targeting a return to next weekend against Vancouver.
Still winless on the road, the Canes will look to benefit from some home cooking tonight, and here we go...
1:20 1st: A good first shift from Eric Staal as he skates around Zach Bogosian and passes to Sergei Samsonov in one motion, but the pass hits Samsonov on his backhand and it results in a weak shot that's easily handled by Thrashers goaltender Ondrej Pavelec.
3:15 1st: The Canes look good in long stretches early tonight. The Cullen-Ruutu-Jokinen generated a chance that culminated in a wraparound that Matt Cullen mearly put through Pavelec's legs, but the goaltender had his stick in perfect position and kept Jussi Jokinen from pouncing on the rebound.
6:04 1st: The Canes have dominated the first part of the game, and they could easily be up by two or three goals. Pavelec has had trouble containing his rebounds, and a second chance nearly gave Tom Kostopoulos his second goal in as many games before the Thrashers defense collapsed in on their goaltender and allowed him to freeze the puck.
7:52 1st: Ilya Kovalchuk hasn't been known as an injury-prone type in his time in the NHL, but only a few games after returning from a knee injury Kovalchuk went down awkwardly in the far corner of the Canes' zone and skated to the bench slowly with what looked like a groin pull.
8:11 1st: Canes lead 1-0; Cole 3 (Gleason, Staal) The Canes capitalized on yet another rebound that Pavelec couldn't handle. Eric Staal won a faceoff back to Tim Gleason at the right point, and Gleason's shot bounced off Pavelec's pads and right to Erik Cole in the far circle. Cole backhanded a weak shot through Pavelec's legs that he never saw thanks to traffic in front, and the Canes took the first lead of the night.
12:00 1st: Joni Pitkanen was the unfortunate victim of a visor with a mind of its own, as the defenseman tried to check a Thrasher and the visor came in on his face, cutting him and sending him to the locker room for repair for a copule of seconds. After a TV timeout, though, he was back on the ice and didn't look to be in any difficulty.
12:20 1st: In other injury news, Kovalchuk is also back out on the ice.
12:56 1st: The Canes came within a skate blade of making it 2-0, but Tuomo Ruutu's cleanup of another Pavelec rebound was ruled no goal by referee Gord Dwyer, who said that Ruutu kicked the puck into the net. Unlike the weak kicking call on Monday in Dallas, there wasn't much question about this one, and the play stood as called on the ice, much to the dismay of the Canes and 14,000 of their closest friends.
15:20 1st: After failing to clear courtesy of Dwyer standing in the way of the clearing attempt, the Thrashers came close to tying the game. The puck lay in the crease for an inordinate amount of time with Manny Legace down and out, but fortunately for the Canes the first stick on the puck was a defenseman's, who cleared the puck out of harm's way.
End 1st: The Canes owned the period, but the Thrashers had a few chances late in the period before putting the Canes on the power play for the second time courtesy of a Jim Slater tripping penalty. Shots in the period were 15-9 Hurricanes, but the discrepancy was larger earlier in the period.
2:18 2nd: Canes take a 2-0 lead; Yelle 2 (Brind'Amour, Gleason) A beauty of a move from Stephane Yelle has the Canes up by two goals. After an adept play to keep the puck in at the Atlanta blue line, Yelle skated in and forced Pavelec into coughing up the puck behind the net. Before the goaltender could scramble to get his stick down, Yelle put the wraparound into the empty net to give the Canes a 2-0 lead.
5:20 2nd: Now there's something you don't see every day: a puck was deflected out of play, over the netting behind the Thrashers' goal, and bounced off the ribbon board above section 115. I can guarantee the paying customers in the club level didn't expect a puck to come flying up their way tonight.
8:45 2nd: The Thrashers have had some jump in their step after killing off a penalty early in the period, but Manny Legace has been solid again and has shut the Thrashers down offensively when he's needed to do so. At the other end, the Canes continue to get solid chances on Pavelec and they're making him quite uncomfortable in his net tonight.
9:50 2nd: Twice in a minute the Canes missed the net on an uncontested chance in front of Pavelec. First Matt Cullen was alone and shot high over the net, then Erik Cole fired wide on a breakaway when Pavelec was down and out of position.
10:31 2nd: Thrashers on the board, down 2-1; Kane 8 (Enstrom, Armstrong) And it figures that the Thrashers would capitalize on the Canes' miscues. Tobias Enstrom stripped Andrew Alberts at the top of the slot and skated around the near circle, passing to the front of the net and hoping for a redirection. Evander Kane obliged, tipping the puck through Legace's pads and pulling the Thrashers to within one.
13:27 2nd: Legace melts down the puck after an extended shift in the Canes' zone, and the Canes are back on their heels for the first time tonight.
13:45 2nd: Canes lead 3-1; Samsonov 3 (Cole) Yeah...never mind. Off a faceoff in the Canes' zone, the Thrashers couldn't find the puck and Sergei Samsonov cleaned up the garbage, starting a give-and-go with Erik Cole. Cole's pass at the bottom of the near circle hit Samsonov's tape and Pavelec had no chance, as the Canes went up by two again.
18:25 2nd: Canes lead 4-1; Cullen 5 (Kostopoulos) The Canes have two shorthanded goals on the season, and Tom Kostopoulos has figured prominently in both of them. This time, it was Kostopoulos filling the Erik Cole role of a few minutes earlier, skating in on a 2-on-2 and finding Matt Cullen alone at the goal mouth to tip the puck behind Pavelec and into the open net.
End 2nd: A great period for the Canes on the scoreboard, but Legace sure had to work to keep the puck out of his net as the Thrashers were coming in waves late in the period. The Canes will start the third period on a power play, again, with Slava Kozlov serving a tripping penalty for the first 105 seconds of the period. Shots in the second were 12-11 Hurricanes, who led overall 27-20.
1:30 3rd: Apparently no one told the Canes that they remained on a power play after the third period started. Despite a couple of shots, the Canes didn't get much in the way of scoring chances with the extra attacker.
4:40 3rd: After taking a penalty (the one that Cullen scored on, incidentally) in the 2nd, Joni Pitkanen hasn't seen the ice again, and he's in the locker room with an upper-body injury probably related to that weird visor incident in the first period.
5:50 3rd: A broken play nearly resulted in a four-goal lead for the Canes, but the puck got stuck in Ray Whitney's skate blade and he couldn't fire it home into a vacated net...
6:21 3rd: Thrashers pull to 4-2; Kozlov 4 (Little, Salmela) ...and thirty seconds later, a broken play leads to a goal for the Thrashers. The Canes couldn't clear the puck out of the zone and it bounced right to Slava Kozlov in the low slot, who didn't miss firing the puck high over Legace to make it a two-goal game.
7:11 3rd: Thrashers cut it to one at 4-3; Kovalchuk 14 (Enstrom, Afinogenov) For the ninth time this year, the Canes surrender two goals in less than a minute. Ilya Kovalchuk is the lucky recipient of a tic-tac-toe passing play from Maxim Afinogenov at the top of the slot, to an unchecked Toby Enstrom in the low slot, then finally a one-timer from Kovalchuk high to the stick side of Legace.
7:35 3rd: Dangerously close to three goals in just over a minute if not for a highway-robbery save from Legace on Colby Armstrong after the Canes turned the puck over at their own blue line. The shot was at about the same point on the ice where Kovalchuk had scored just seconds earlier. The Canes are really skating in circles, and the Thrashers are taking full advantage.
9:00 3rd: Thrashers tie the game at 4; Afinogenov 10 (Kovalchuk, Enstrom) The collapse is complete. In just under three minutes the Canes have blown a three-goal lead and have looked generally terrible in so doing. Aaron Ward made a bonehead play defending Kovalchuk at the top of the far circle, skating in on the Thrashers' captain and allowing Afinogenov to get behind the defense for an easy tap-in. Once Ward committed to Kovalchuk, the writing was on the wall and the Canes couldn't scramble to recover.
13:57 3rd: Thrashers have a 5-4 lead; Peverley 9 (Little) There are no words. Bryan Little left a dump pass for Rich Peverley just inside the Canes' blue line, and Peverley had all day to wind up and scorch a shot high over Legace's glove to give the Thrashers their first lead of the game. This has become surreal.
18:00 3rd: Remember the last time these two teams met? Yeah...
18:57 3rd: Thrashers score into the empty cage; Reasoner 1 (White, Kubina) (en) Legace wasn't in the net, but it doesn't matter. The Canes were serenaded with boos, and really, who can blame the fans after the home team blew a three-goal lead by giving up five straight goals?
End 3rd: Unbelievable. The fans left gave the team another rousing Bronx cheer to send them off the ice. Methinks the Canes' locker room will resemble a funeral parlor tonight.
Postgame: It was about what I expected. The Canes were shell-shocked and didn't know what to say. Paul Maurice was shell-shocked and didn't know what to say. In their defense, I don't know what they could have said. The collapse was so complete, so epic, that no right-thinking professional hockey player would have the words for a five-goal collapse in the final fifteen minutes of the game.
Matt Cullen and Tom Kostopoulos tried to put their spin on what happened, but both players stumbled onto the sad reality: the Canes thought they had two points in the bag, let off the gas and wound up staring at a 6-4 defeat. Doesn't get much more basic than that.
Click for Cullen's and Kostopoulos' remarks. Paul Maurice's press conference is attached.
The Canes don't have time to stew over this one, as they head to Buffalo tonight to face the Sabres tomorrow. They're back here Monday to take on the Washington Capitals; we'll be here, and we hope you'll be here as well.
Friday, November 27, 2009
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