John Forslund, for now a TV free agent, sizes up the Canes’ matchup with Rangers
The Carolina Hurricanes will have nearly everyone available Monday when training camp begins.
“It definitely will be good to have a full deck,” Canes captain Jordan Staal said last week.
That covers the players, coaches and staff, but there will be a big absence on the team: John Forslund.
The Canes’ longtime television play-by-play man still is without a new contract. Forslund is a TV free agent, so to speak, and for now no longer affiliated with a hockey franchise he first joined in 1991.
Forslund, whose contract with the Hurricanes ended June 30, said Friday that his status had not changed. On Saturday, Canes general manager Don Waddell said he had spoken with Forslund and that they “left the door open” to a return. But Forslund remains unsigned.
With that said, Forslund seemed happy Friday to discuss other things: namely the Canes’ scheduled qualifying round matchup with the New York Rangers. It will be a best-of-five series and Forslund believes could be the most intriguing of the eight qualifiers that will set the 16-team field for the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs — if all goes as planned.
The biggest question: who starts in net for the Rangers, rookie Igor Shesterkin or old pro Henrik Lundqvist, who has owned the Canes through the years?
“My thought is you start with Shesterkin and then Hank (Lundqvist) is your followup,” Forslund said. “If you start and the rookie is good, then the rookie is good. If you start with Hank and he’s not any good, and he really wasn’t that good in the regular season, then you’re going to get second-guessed and then you’re going to ask a rookie to bail you out.
“For me, Shesterkin was the No. 1 goalie when they finished, so I think they’ll start that way. Then what a wild card it would be if they go to Hank. You’ve got Hank with his success against Carolina. I don’t know what conclusion you draw from that but it will be a story line. And then you have his pride as a competitor.”
The Rangers topped the Canes in all four games in the regular season. Lundqvist was the winner in three and goaltending was a huge factor in the season series, but there’s more to the Rangers’ success.
Coaches like to say their best players need to be their best players in games. The Rangers got that kind of play from the likes of Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin, and others, against Carolina.
“What they were able to do was get great goaltending in all the games,” Forslund said “The Canes were able to do a lot of the things they wanted to do. They generated chances, they generated an abundance of shots. They forechecked well.
“But while they did forecheck well they also stretched out the ice for the Rangers and the Rangers are really good in transition. They’re good at getting the puck up the ice quickly and their high-end guys are high-end.”
In the Dec. 27 game in New York, the Canes trailed 4-1 and then battled back to make it 4-3. But late in the third period, Panarin raced into the Canes’ zone, outbattled defenseman Brett Pesce for a puck in the left corner, then zipped a perfect backdoor pass to Ryan Strome for the score. Ball game.
“Zibanejad and Panarin had great seasons and those guys were really feeling it toward the end,” Forslund said of the Rangers. “They have a real good group. Like the Canes I think they have tremendous chemistry. They’re going to be an emotional team in this tournament because of what happened (with the coronavirus) in New York. And they’re ahead of expectation. No one expected them to be anywhere close to the playoff line and they were.”
The Canes (38-25-5) held the first wild-card playoff position when the NHL season was suspended March 12 because of the rapid spread of the virus. The Rangers (37-28-5) had pulled within two points of the Canes in the Eastern Conference standings although Carolina did have two games in hand on New York.
The Canes joined Tampa Bay as the only NHL teams to vote against the 24-team Return to Play format, preferring the top 16 teams. That would have kept out the Rangers, and while that story line has been somewhat forgotten of late it will surely be rekindled before the Aug. 1 start of play in Toronto.
“If you’re going to do that, you’re going to live with it,” Forslund said of the vote.
Canes defenseman Brady Skjei played for the Rangers against Carolina this season before his Feb. 24 trade to the Canes. Asked to disclose the reasons for the Rangers’ success -- secrets from inside the room -- he could only smile.
“Obviously Hank helped a ton in those games and we had some good games,” Skjei said. Sometimes, it’s just that simple.
Forslund would agree. He was there to call all four. He can only hope there’s more.
This story was originally published July 11, 2020 at 10:04 AM.
