How NHL stops, starts and inconsistent lineups forced the Canes to adjust preparation
With apologies to Tom Petty, the Hurricanes could, without much effort, adapt one of his more famous songs into an anthem of sorts:
“The waiting, is the hardest part;
Every day you see one more case;
You take it to the rink, you hope you get to start;
The waaaaiting, is the hardest part.”
On Dec. 12, the Canes capped a Western Canadian road swing with a 2-1 win over the Vancouver Canucks. Saturday — 34 days later — the Canes faced the Canucks again. In between there should have been a steady diet of games (14 in all), mixed with well-timed practices.
Instead, Saturday’s game is just the eighth the Canes will play in 34 days, with seven others postponed due to COVID protocols affecting a large swath of the NHL — including the Canes themselves.
All of the rest — and the rust — came to a head Thursday in a home rematch with the Columbus Blue Jackets at PNC Arena. Too much rest and clearly some rust combined with a lackluster overall effort was a recipe for disaster: A 6-0 Blue Jackets win, just barely removed from a 7-4 Canes comeback win for the ages in Columbus.
“We were going to be scrambly and rusty, and I expected that,” head coach Rod Brind’Amour said after Thursday’s debacle, “but not like that, that doesn’t affect how hard you’ve got to work, and we just didn’t come ready in that department.”
For much of the week, anticipation had been building around the debut of newly signed rookie goalie Jack LaFontaine, who came on board in a rare mid-season signing due to a lack of goaltending depth across an organization decimated by injuries and COVID cases. There was chatter that LaFontaine, fresh from the University of Minnesota in the Big Ten, may start Thursday, with Frederik Andersen likely to start Tuesday in Philadelphia, and the Canes’ other NHL veteran, Antti Raanta, on the shelf with an injury.
In yet another COVID shift, the Canes didn’t play in Philadelphia, allowing the team to start a fresh and rested Andersen on Thursday while LaFontaine guarded the bench.
Until the score started to spiral.
“We were giving up breakaway after breakaway, we weren’t going to leave Freddie in there to keep having that,” Brind’Amour said. “I figured, maybe we throw the kid in and we decide, ‘Oh, maybe we better not give those up,’ but that’s not what happened, unfortunately. I hate that we threw him in for that.”
“That” was a barrage of action behind a porous defensive effort. The first shot LaFontaine saw in his NHL career came off the stick of Cole Sillinger on the back end of a breakaway. It went in. Two shots later, another breakaway, another goal.
“It was embarrassing, I feel bad for our goalies,” Canes captain Jordan Staal said. “I really feel bad for Jack, that’s my bad there, and we’re going to play better in front of them come next game.”
Less than an hour after Thursday’s loss, the team was already moving on.
“We’re not going to get in full panic mode about one game,” defenseman Tony DeAngelo said. “I think we stunk tonight, but we know how good of a team we are, and we just have to start showing it.”
The next chance to show it is Saturday, an increasingly rare second game within 48 hours. It’s a schedule the Canes are hoping steadies itself.
“We do have to get into a groove and start playing games,” Staal said. “It’s been a frustrating last month, but our group, we’ll get into it and get some games under our belts and start playing Carolina Hurricane hockey.”
