Mo's arrival feels a little like 'Wall Street'

RALEIGH -- Midway through "Wall Street," corporate raider Gordon Gekko rages at the slow progress of his takeover of Teldar Paper.

"I can't believe we can fire half the management and nothing changes!" Gekko laments.

Fans of the Carolina Hurricanes can sympathize. The first game of the Second Mo Dynasty looked a lot like the dying days of the Peter Laviolette era.

Paul Maurice saw the Canes get off to a crisper, more energetic start, but fail to convert any of their chances. He saw them give up the first goal for the 11th straight game. He saw them lose focus after that goal, quickly giving up another. He saw them rally, again without results.

And that was just the first period.

Thanks to the now-usual barrage of bad passes and defensive-zone miscues, the Hurricanes stumbled to a 5-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, Michael Leighton giving up all five goals on Pittsburgh's first 14 shots.

"We ran some high-risk things that went in the opposite direction for us," Maurice said, a wry smile on his face.

Maurice -- and new associate coach Ron Francis -- did achieve immediate results in one area. The Hurricanes ended an 0-for-28 skid on the power play with a second-period goal from Matt Cullen.

And effort and emotion weren't a problem for most of the game, a step in the right direction, but if firing the coach doesn't provoke that reaction, nothing will.

The rest of the problems that have beset the Hurricanes, from unproductive stars to bad decisions to the lack of a physical edge, remain intact.

Pacing behind the bench, hands often in pockets, Maurice's face betrayed little emotion. Afterward, he hinted the task ahead of him over the next four months is just as big as he feared it might be.

"Clearly," Maurice said, "We've got some work to do."

Maurice's pregame introduction Thursday was met with cheers and boos, one day short of five years since he last graced the home bench at the RBC Center.

When the team next returned to the arena 13 days later, Maurice was gone. (Laviolette made his Carolina coaching debut on Dec. 18, 2003, with a 2-1 overtime win over the Penguins.) And now Maurice is back, returning to a hockey market that has changed substantially since he was last here.

Maurice promised a "rude awakening" for the players who aren't willing to step up their games, but that works both ways. If Maurice thinks he's going to enjoy the lack of scrutiny he reminisced about in Toronto, he's sorely mistaken.

This fan base is hypersensitive to any signs of a return to the vanilla hockey of Maurice's previous tenure, so much so that at one point in the first period, as Patrick Eaves hesitated for a moment whether to join a teammate in pursuing the puck, a fan yelled, "Forecheck! Get in there!"

With a banner in the rafters, fans are no longer content with general mediocrity and occasional competitiveness.

They're frustrated by the post-2006 failures. They demand better, and for big chunks of the past two seasons and most of this season, this team hasn't delivered. Thursday, the first-period excitement faded to indifference and then boos in the third period, a sound heard all too often this fall.

It's up to Maurice to change that. He didn't tinker with Laviolette's lines Thursday, other than inserting the sorely missed Justin Williams into the lineup and scratching Wade Brookbank for the first time this season.

Maurice did experiment on back-to-back Pittsburgh power plays in the first period, using 14 of the 18 players on his bench on the penalty-kill. The second power play ended in a goal by Petr Sykora, who has made a habit of scoring big goals against the Hurricanes. Sykora duly tacked on another in the second period.

Maurice has seen plenty of Sykora goals from the spot where he stood, once again, Thursday. File that under "the more things change..." as well.