RALEIGH, N.C. – This column is not going to be fair. Not really. Not when a jump here, a whistle there, a completely satisfied accident somewhere, anywhere, could have modified the complete look and narrative of this series, this team, the perception of this organization itself. Not when this team has looked so strong at five-on-five, not when the transience of special teams is the basis explanation for its current woes, not when every game it plays — and each rattling game it loses – appears to be decided by a goal, a shot, a deflection. Not when this team is having fun with the longest sustained success in franchise history.
But we have now to speak in regards to the Carolina Hurricanes.
Not in the identical sentence because the Toronto Maple Leafs – that's too harsh, too melodramatic. But in the identical paragraph.
Because it doesn't work. It didn’t work. And it appears that evidently it won't work.
By now you already know what hurricanes are all about. Depth over elite finishers. Quantity of recordings takes precedence over quality. Relentlessness as an alternative of ingenuity. A goalkeeper is all the time adequate, but never great enough. It works so beautifully, so majestically, from October to April. But things didn't work out in May, they usually didn't even make it to June.
Carolina is an organizational marvel, one in all the best-run and most forward-thinking front offices within the league. The Hurricanes have built a monster, a team that’s so strong, so fast, so effective and so ferocious on the forecheck. You win battles. They get pucks. They wear down opponents. They won the NHL's highly competitive Metropolitan Division three years in a row before narrowly losing by three points to the Presidents' Trophy winners New York Rangers this season. In each of the last 4 seasons they’ve finished among the many top three teams within the league. The analytical models love them, the bettors prefer them, and the hockey players and computer kids alike respect them.
Then the playoffs come and, well, it happens.
The Hurricanes are once more getting ready to disaster, trailing 3-0 of their second-round series against the Rangers after Artemi Panarin's acrobatic tip-in 1:43 into time beyond regulation gave New York a 3-2 win on Thursday night. It was a heartbreaking loss for Carolina, especially after Andrei Svechnikov scored the equalizer with 1:36 left in regulation, sending the cacophonous PNC Arena into absolute chaos. It gave the look of this may very well be a turning point within the series. Instead, there was simply one other twist of the knife.
HAVE A GAME, ANDREI! pic.twitter.com/6jfaD9Af6H
– Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) May 10, 2024
It was just as cruel in Game 2 on Tuesday night, when the Hurricanes lost in double time beyond regulation at Madison Square Garden. And once they lost 3-4 in Game 1. And once they lost all 4 games of last season's Eastern Conference finals to the Florida Panthers, each by one goal, two of them in time beyond regulation, one in all them in quadruple time beyond regulation, the sixth-longest game in NHL history. The last eight postseason losses were by a goal difference, five of which got here in time beyond regulation.
Always pursue one other goal. I'm all the time attempting to recover from the hump. I never quite get there.
“That’s a bit of a broken record,” Canes captain Jordan Staal said quietly Thursday night. He was talking about one other game through which special teams – which had been such a force all season – betrayed Carolina. The second-best power play within the league ended 0:5 for the third game in a row. The Hurricanes even allowed Chris Kreider a shorthanded goal and two other first-class shorthanded probabilities.
But Staal could have also talked in regards to the greater picture. Because we have now experienced this May frustration too over and over now.
Counting the play-in round of the 2020 Bubble Playoffs, Carolina has won a postseason round in six straight seasons. It's the sort of sustained competitiveness that almost all players within the league would do anything to attain. But Carolina hasn't won a game beyond the second round in those six seasons, winning the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019 and 2023. The Hurricanes Way works extremely well within the regular season. This allows wild card-level playoff teams just like the New York Islanders to work quickly during the last two seasons.
But against other elite teams — ones with all-world players like Panarin or Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov or Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point and all-world goaltenders like Igor Shesterkin or Sergei Bobrovsky or Andrei Vasilevskiy — they last only briefly. short. So short that it looks like a mistake each time, that it feels unfair in charge them for these losses, that it looks like the hockey gods are only fidgeting with them in their very own cruel way.
But still short. Always short.
And so Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour can say ad nauseam that he loved Carolina's five-on-five game against the Rangers. He should. The Hurricanes were the higher team in all three games. And we will point to Pyotr Kochetkov's sensible pokecheck of a Kreider breakaway in the ultimate minute of regulation time, or any variety of saves from Frederik Andersen in the primary two games. And so should we. Both goalkeepers were solid. And we will indicate that Carolina got the finisher it's all the time been missing in Jake Guentzel, and he's scored three goals within the last two games. And so should we. He was as advertised.
But sooner or later, tripping hazards develop into a trend, tripping hazards develop into a trademark. And while the intense case of every situation could be very different, the Hurricanes find themselves in the same situation to the Maple Leafs, who’ve turned “run it back” right into a punchline and are running right into a brick wall spring after spring. The Canes are higher than the Leafs. The Canes have achieved greater than the Leafs. The Canes are the polar opposite of the star-laden, top-heavy Leafs. But the Canes have won the Stanley Cup just as over and over because the Leafs. That's what it's all about, right? Both were built to win championships. Neither of them got here that close.
Toronto fired coach Sheldon Keefe on Thursday. Carolina obviously won't do the identical with Brind'Amour, the most effective coaches within the league. He's due for a brand new contract, but it surely's inconceivable that the franchise icon shall be on the bench anywhere else. He shall be back. But Carolina may rethink things. Top duo Sebastian Aho and Svechnikov are locked up long-term, however the roster is filled with pending free agents. General manager Don Waddell may have the sort of cap flexibility most contenders can only dream of. Waddell can pursue more top talent in attack and maybe in goal. Brind'Amour can tinker together with his system, perhaps loosening the structure and constraints of Carolina's dump-and-chase sort of sending pucks to the web from anywhere and all over the place, and inspiring more creativity and offensive boldness. Something. Anything. Because the Rangers are attacking the web. The Hurricanes just shoot for it.
Unless there’s a historic comeback from a 3-0 deficit that makes this column and this narrative more irrelevant than the silly concept that hockey can't thrive in a southern market, Waddell and Brind'Amour may have to make your mind up whether or not they too need to run for it back. Or when it's time for something else.
“Tomorrow is a new day,” Staal said. “It's going to hurt tonight – I won't get much sleep. But tomorrow it's a new day and we'll find a way to win a game. It has been our role model here for a long time.”
And it worked for a protracted, very long time. Just not quite adequate. Just not when it matters most.
image credit : theathletic.com