Opening Weekend Wrap-up

Picture Source: hurricanes.nhl.com

This past weekend marked the start of the regular season for the Carolina Hurricanes.  There were a lot of questions and concerns heading into this season.  For starters we were curious as to what kind of impression were the 2013-2014 Canes going to leave us with.  Well wait no longer the answer is just a "read more" click away.

Chris
After watching the games against the Red Wings and Flyers I have been left with a warm feeling inside of me because this team is showing that it has what it takes to survive the Hell known as the Metropolitan Division (or The Metro as I like to shorten it to).  Both Ward and Khudobin were fantastic in net and the Canes came out with three points out of four for the first two games.  We just may have that 1-2 goalie punch that the team has be desperately looking for since Ward's rookie season when he teamed up with Martin Gerber.  Both games were tight with (obviously) different outcomes in the last minute of regulation during the empty net situations.  With the Wings scoring two goals in the third period (tying it 2-2 with 14 seconds left) just made me thing "oh no... not AGAIN with these third period meltdowns!" but, against the Flyers they were able to shut down the attack with the extra man and almost score an empty-netter. 

There are two things that stood out to me after opening weekend:  Radek Dvorak and the Canes new depth on defense.

Dvorak is proving to be the Canes "diamond in the rough" signing for them with two goals in two games.  I know it's early, but I am hoping he can keep this up and have a solid 20-30 goal season.  Remember, this is a guy that has played 1200 games already so the Canes are hoping he still has enough in the tank after all those games played underneath him already.

Now onto the defense... wow, just wow.  The D have impressed me the most out of this whole team.  For some time the defense for the Canes has been very sub par and with Joni Pitkanen out for the season with a foot injury and Tim Gleason out with a concussion I have had very low hopes for team on the back end.  I am just amazed with how solid this core of d-men we have right now.  Let's put it this way: I don't even miss Pitkanen and Gleason out there.  In fact, if this new core of defense keeps it up like they have for these two games it will be some very interesting competition for the top pairing (Justin Faulk and Andrej Sekera are the top pairing with Pitkanen and Gleason out).  All three pairings on the ice have been amazing out there shutting down just about every guy trying to go down the wings and picking up all the loose pucks.  This is just a really solid core right now that I hope can last the long season.

Andrew
I had the privilege of witnessing the Canes opening weekend in person.  What I saw from the Canes this weekend was a solid performance from both sides of the ice.  That being said we weren't perfect and I saw some areas where we could greatly improve.  The Canes acquired 3 points out of 4 possible from the two games.  To avoid being redundant from what Chris said I will just briefly talk about my positives and negatives from the weekend.

I feel getting bad news first than good is the way to go, so let's start with some of the areas we can improve on.  First is the most obvious, our power play.  We managed to get one goal on seven power plays.  I feel like our strategy on the power play is just simply not working.  The one thing they do on the power play that bothers me more than Buffalo fans is dumping the puck in.  They simply don't have the physicality to fight for the puck behind the net.  We are constantly being bumped off the puck and sent packing back to our own end.  I feel like the power play was much better when we used puck handling and speed to create scoring chances.  Another area with room for improvement is our neutral zone play.  This goes along with the dumping the puck in on the power play.  I feel we create more opportunities when we skate the puck in and use the point to set up a play.  The largest concern for me was our 3rd period play.  We can NOT sit on our lead in the third period.  We may have succeed in doing this on Sunday against the 0-2 Flyers, but with the strength of our division we can not afford to do this.  Back in 2006 the Canes were very much a 3rd period team.  We were the team that was surging to get the goal to get back into the game.  If we can get back to playing a solid 60 minutes, it will give us our best shot at the postseason.  Enough dwelling on the negative after two games, let's talk about the positives.

DEFENSE!  We have defense!  I was so happy and relieved to see how well our defense played in both games.  Justin Faulk and Sekera looked like our definitive first defensive pairing.  Faulk wore the "A" because of Gleason's injury, and this looked like it was well deserved.  I can recall several situations in which Faulk saved a goal.  It wasn't just that first pairing either.  Hainsey had some good plays; Harrison netted a goal; and Bellemore had some gritty hits.  I think the biggest breath of fresh air was Ryan Murphy.  That kid is something else.  His ability to jump up on the attack and still have a defensive presence is going to be great for us.  I know there were a lot of questions coming into the season about how much ice time he would get outside of the power play.  I think the coaching staff answered that question with the amount of ice time he received.

Line chemistry was also something that was very pleasing to see.  We already know the Staal, Semin, and Tlusty line is capable of scoring goals.  They may still have yet to put some points on the boards, but from history we have to trust that they will get it going.  The Gerbe, Dwyer, and Staal line also appeared to have a lot of chemistry which we had seen previously in the preseason.  The Dvorak, Skinner, and Nash line had the best chemistry from the weekend though.  Skinner and Dvorak really appeared to click as line mates.  Skinner was starting to look like the rookie season Skinner that was so electric and entertaining to watch.  If we can get 3 lines going with scoring we can have a legitimate shot at the playoffs.

This weekend showed us that we aren't perfect and certainly have mistakes to learn from.  It also showed us that there is potential and we should be excited for the season to come.  Grab those jerseys, get those tickets, and remember...Let's Go Canes!