By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
Email Puck Drops
After a game in Sunrise, Florida last night, the Canes and Panthers made the short flight up I-95 to Raleigh as they prepared to exchange pleasantries again on back-to-back nights. The Canes did their best to give the Panthers a nice sending-off gift, allowing six unanswered goals en route to a 6-3 defeat, the Canes' twentieth regulation loss of the season. Cam Ward was pulled but he will start tonight's game, as newly-minted official backup Manny Legace (who inherited the job after Michael Leighton was claimed on waivers by Philadelphia) will be riding the pine tonight. Niclas Wallin and Tim Gleason will miss another game, meaning the Canes will again lean heavily on the trio of Brett Carson, Bryan Rodney and Jay Harrison to pick up the ice-time slack.
If you were wondering where the Live Blog went for Wednesday's game against Dallas (way to go, missing a Tuomo Ruutu hat trick, ya dumb reporter), it unfortunately wasn't for good reasons. My grandmother passed away about a week and a half ago, and it's been a rough week for my whole family. My brother, for reasons unknown, coined "G" as her nickname a few years ago, and I was lucky enough to live just down the street for her for four years after she moved to Raleigh from Cleveland in 2005. She didn't quite understand the whole concept of hockey, but she knew how important it was to our family and she always made sure to ask about how the Canes were doing. (Recently, that wasn't exactly a positive conversation.)
G had a bunch of health problems and while I'm happy for her that she doesn't have to worry about them anymore, it's still not something you ever want to deal with. I'm going to miss her terribly, and while I'm supposed to at least have a modicum of journalistic integrity up here in my lofty perch, I hope the Powers that Be don't mind me wishing for a Canes' win for G tonight. After all, it's not like the Cleveland Browns (for whom she cheered for years, always asking "Who's their quarterback?" despite not knowing a single one dating back to the days of Bernie Kosar) gave her much to cheer about this year.
Here's to you, G...it won't be the same without you.
On with the show...
1:16 1st: The fireworks got started early, as the Canes had some unfinished business waiting after yesterday's game. Tom Kostopoulos and Gregory Campbell went at it at center ice off a faceoff, and a clear victory to Kostopoulos as he got more than a few rights in on Campbell before the linesmen stepped in and escorted them to the penalty boxes.
2:53 1st: Off a faceoff deep in the Florida zone, Eric Staal nearly put the Canes on the board first for the second straight game, as he was all alone in front of Panthers goalie Scott Clemmensen but his shot was off the mark by a foot or so and bounced off the outside of the net.
4:20 1st: At the other end, Ward got lucky on a broken play that started with a wraparound attempt by Nathan Horton. The puck rolled off Horton's stick but dribbled in on Ward with three Panthers crashing the net, and Ward was lucky to regain control before one of them got a stick on what would have been a chip shot from three feet.
11:20 1st: A good forechecking shift by the Dwyer-Cullen-Jokinen combination results in some unlucky bounces for the Canes. It could easily be 1-0 now if not for some timely deflections by the Panthers' defensemen.
12:28 1st: Canes lead 1-0; Dwyer 2 (Cullen, Whitney) And speaking of that line, their hard work and skating earned them the first goal of the game...just like last night. Cullen and Dwyer played catch behind the net, and while Dwyer took a hit to make a play Cullen corralled the puck and passed across the crease to a wide-open Dwyer who had an easy tap-in to put the Canes on the board.
14:31 1st: Stephane Yelle earns himself two minutes after a weird-looking hit in front of the Panthers' bench. Yelle caught Victor Oreskovich knee-on-knee, although it looked to almost be by accident as Yelle's legs were both directed away from Oreskovich. I don't think Yelle had any ill intentions, but it's a hit that has to be penalized.
14:47 1st: Canes lead 2-0; Cullen 8 (unassisted) (sh) Matt Cullen has to be the first period's first star to this point. Cullen stole the puck at the Florida blue line on the power play resulting from Yelle's hit, then skated in on a 2-on-1 with Bryan Rodney as a decoy. Everyone in the building expected Cullen to shoot, and so he did...a perfectly placed shot from the top of the far circle that beat Clemmensen high over his glove with about two inches to spare.
End 1st: It was within an inch of being 3-0, as Ray Whitney hit the far post with three seconds left in the period. Still, after last night's debacle a two-goal lead looks pretty good to the home folk. Somewhere, G is happy with this turn of events. Shots in the first were 7-6 Hurricanes.
4:30 2nd: Not much for chances on either side so far. It's a vast improvement from last night, when the Hurricanes simply fell asleep after scoring the first goal and proceeed to allow the Panthers to take target practice.
6:30 2nd: A rare sight: Joni Pitkanen leveling an opponent with a clean check. Radek Dvorak was the unlucky receipient of a Pitkanen steamrolling just inside the Panthers' blue line.
8:27 2nd: Canes lead 3-0; Samsonov 5 (Kostopoulos, Harrison) The Panthers' inability to do anything resembling a competent NHL team in Raleigh continues. Jay Harrison started a point-to-point rush by finding Tom Kostopoulos just on the Panthers' side of center ice, and Kostopoulos skated to the top of the near circle where he fired an on-the-mark pass to Sergei Samsonov who was unchecked across the slot. Samsonov didn't miss, beating Clemmensen on a shot the goaltender had little chance of stopping to make it 3-0.
12:20 2nd: The Canes continue to get serious pressure in the Panthers' zone, with Matt Cullen in the middle of most of it. If not for a timely stick check in the low slot, Rod Brind'Amour would have found Cullen all alone at the far post with a golden chance to make it 4-0.
16:30 2nd: Cam Ward hasn't had much work since that flurry in the first period, but he just came up huge in robbing the Panthers on their best chance of the night with two quick kick saves.
18:10 2nd: Not long after, Brandon Sutter gives Ward a hand by diving to deflect a Bryan McCabe shot as the Panthers skated in 3-on-2. He looks more and more like Rod Brind'Amour with every passing game.
End 2nd: A nice ovation for the Canes as they head to the locker room up three goals. They'll have thirty seconds of an Andrew Alberts penalty to kill to begin the third, but the first 3/4 of the penalty kill sure looked impressive. Shots in the second were 16-14 Panthers, who took a 22-21 lead overall.
2:17 3rd: Panthers on the board, down 3-1; Matthias 3 (Leopold) There's something you don't see every day. An innocent dump-in by Jordan Leopold drew Cam Ward out of the net, and in an extraordinary stroke of bad luck the puck jumped over Ward's stick, hit a glass support and bounced right out into the slot, where Shawn Matthias had a wide open net. Shame that Ward had to lose a shutout on something like that, but them's the breaks when you've lost 20 games before Christmas.
2:30 3rd: The same thing nearly happened to Clemmensen at the other end a few seconds later, when he bobbled the puck and almost knocked it into his own net. It isn't a full moon tonight, is it?
5:10 3rd: A circus save by Ward on a 2-on-1. For a guy with little work early in the game, he's earned his stripes in the second part of the match.
6:24 3rd: Not every day you hear booing of a TV-timeout segment, but a Chuck Kaiton feature on Scott Stevens earned more than a few Bronx cheers from the crowd. (Not surprisingly, I might add.)
11:43 3rd: The Panthers get a 5-on-3 for 1:43. Needless to say, the Canes need to kill it off.
12:33 3rd: Panthers within 1; Weiss 17 (Frolik, Reinprecht) (pp) ...and they don't. Out of a scrum in front of the net, Ward couldn't track the puck before Stephen Weiss got his stick on it and fired the puck past Ward and cut the Canes lead to 3-2. The home crowd was less than pleased with the officials, giving them a rousing, um, ovation.
End 3rd: Late in the period, Patrick Dwyer missed an empty net but that was about all that went wrong for the Canes, as they salvaged a split with the Panthers and got their four-game homestand off on the right foot.
Postgame: Paul Maurice and Matt Cullen couldn't stop talking about the contributions of the young players in tonight's game, particularly Patrick Dwyer, who was a flubbed open net away from his first two-goal game in the NHL. Every point matters, and for the Canes to come back from a disheartening loss shows that their confidence seems to be returning; it would have surprised no one if last night's game happened a month ago and the Canes proceeded to lay an egg in their next matchup.
The homestand continues with the Rangers on Monday and the Canadiens on Wednesday before old friend Peter Laviolette returns to the RBC Center with his Philadelphia Flyers the day after Christmas.
Click for audio from Patrick Dwyer, Matt Cullen and Cam Ward. Paul Maurice's press conference is attached.
G would be pleased, as the Canes delivered a win for her tonight. We'll see if they can make it two in a row Monday when the Rangers come to town. Back at it then...
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment