Canes return home over .500

By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
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Finally, the Carolina Hurricanes are home.

It's been more than three weeks since their last game at the RBC Center, a preseason tilt against the Atlanta Thrashers on October 1st.  It's been eleven days since they were able to sleep in their own beds.  It's been 15,710 miles since they first took off for St. Petersburg the night after they played the Thrashers.

And, improbably, the Canes return from their sojourn over .500, with a 4-3 record after an overtime win against Phoenix on Saturday night.

It's certainly too early for these statistics to mean anything of consequence, but it should be noted that the Canes currently sit eighth in the Eastern Conference.  Of the seven teams below them in the standings, five have played more games than the Canes' seven.  And every team in the league has played at least two home games, which is two more than the Canes can claim for themselves.  (Yes, the Canes have technically played a "home" game, but when that game is played 4,500 miles away you can't really say there was any home-ice advantage.)

In other words, the Canes should be very, very proud of what they've accomplished in the first two-plus weeks of the season.

Paul Maurice said before the team left Raleigh that the long road trip to open the season could be viewed as either a good or a bad thing.  If the Canes went out and came back with heavy legs, poor play and only a few points in the bank, it would be a deep hole for such a young team to recover from and would make the job that much tougher.  But instead, the Canes seemingly gained confidence in every game.  Yes, there were some stumbles.  The games in Vancouver and Los Angeles proved that.

But no one expected this team to steamroll through the early portion of the schedule.  Coming home over .500 is a significant accomplishment, and it gives the Canes the confidence to know that despite being one of the youngest teams in the NHL, they can hold their own with anyone in the league. Even when they've flown enough to qualify for frequent-flier upgrades for the rest of their lives.

On this date last year, the Canes were six games into a club-record 14-game losing streak, while playing a normal schedule with one of the oldest teams in the NHL.  This year, they're over .500 after seven games, not one of them at the RBC Center, with one of the youngest rosters in the league.

Go figure.