Canes begin quest to fill in all the boxes in the Stanley Cup playoffs
The Carolina Hurricanes have lined up 16 white boxes on the front facade of PNC Arena.
Fill in all 16 with a hurricane-warning emblem and Canes fans can start partying like it’s 2006.
It takes 16 victories to claim the Stanley Cup, which many believe is the hardest trophy in sports to win. For the Canes, that quest begins Monday in Game 1 of their Central Division first-round series with the Nashville Predators.
“Everybody is super excited to get into the playoffs,” Canes forward Nino Niederreiter said Friday. “Whenever you’re in the playoffs, everything is possible. We can’t be just satisfied with being in. We want to make sure we have a good run. But it starts out from just Game 1 and go from there.”
In the 2019 playoffs, in Rod Brind’Amour’s first year as head coach, the Canes filled the first eight boxes at PNC Arena with the red-and-black emblems by winning a best-of-seven playoff series against the Washington Capitals and then the New York Islanders. Then came the Boston Bruins. The rest of the boxes were left blank, and soon removed, after the Bruins swept the Eastern Conference finals in four games.
Last year’s playoffs were held in the bubble cities of Toronto and Edmonton because of the pandemic. But playoff hockey is back in Raleigh, back at PNC Arena.
Brind’Amour, the Canes’ captain on the 2006 Cup champion, had no problems getting himself amped up for the playoffs when he was a player. And as a head coach?
“It just feels like a lot of stress,” he said last week. “As a player, you worry about yourself. ‘How do I get ready?’ You’re excited to go play. When you’re a coach you’re worried about 20 guys. You’re worried about all of them, where they’re at, are they feeling good?
“So you’ve got that little bit of anxiety, but also it’s a good time of year. This is what they’ve worked for, to have a chance to play for the Stanley Cup, play in the playoffs. So it’s all come to this point.”
The Canes (36-12-8) were the Central Division champions in the NHL’s new four-division setup that will be a one-and-done caused by the pandemic. The Predators (31-23-2), with a late push, finished fourth.
After a 6-3 beating by Tampa Bay on March 13, the Predators were 11-16-1 at the halfway point of the 56-game season. They went 20-7-1 in the second half as some injured players began to filter back into the lineup, going 7-2-1 in their last 10 to nail down the final playoff spot in the Central.
“We’ve more or less been playing playoff hockey for the last two months because our playoff lives were on the line,” Predators defenseman Ryan Ellis said Friday on a media call.
The Canes, who were 20-7-1 in the first half of the season, won the first six games in the divisional series with the Preds but then dropped the final two games of the regular season, in Nashville.
“You could tell there was a big difference when they were missing some of their guys,” Brind’Amour said. “I think they figured it out when they got healthy. They kind of got their game going. I think they were a little bit all over the place, maybe because of the injuries and whatnot. Then all of a sudden the last month or month and a half that was the team that everybody expected to see from the get-go.
“They’ve got a powerful lineup. There’s no weaknesses. And then when their goalies are playing as well as they are, that just amps up everything that they’re doing. It’s not great news for us that they’ve figured it out, but it’s going to be a challenge for us either way.”
Goalie Juuse Saros has become the No. 1 guy after the Preds leaned for so many seasons on Pekka Rinne. Saros, 26, played 36 games, going 21-11-1 with a 2.28 goals-against average and .927 save percentage.
Rinne, the 2018 Vezina Trophy winner, played just five games in the second half of the season as Saros became the workhorse. While the younger of the two Finns took over in net, Rinne, 38, turned back the clock in the final regular-season game against Carolina — albeit against a Canes team with several regulars held out of the lineup — in notching his 60th career shutout with 30 saves in a 5-0 win.
Brind’Amour was asked if, as the Central’s No. 1 seed, and with one of the best records in the NHL, the Canes will feel like the “hunted” this year.
“All that kind of goes out the window,” he said. “I feel like everybody’s now hunting each other. That’s our mentality. That’s the way we have to play anyway.”
The Canes are hunting 16 Stanley Cup victories. A crowd that could be as large as 11,000 or 12,000 will be in PNC Arena on Monday to see the start of that quest in Game 1 against the Predators.
“I know I’m going to be amped up, for every game,” Canes forward Steven Lorentz said Saturday. “The playoffs are a whole different animal. It doesn’t matter if you’re the first seed or the eighth seed. If you show up up ready to play and out-compete the other team that’s usually the team that ends up on top. I can’t wait to get going.”
This story was originally published May 16, 2021 at 1:00 PM.
