DeCock: When the fair comes to town, Hurricanes hit the road
It’s time for the North Carolina State Fair and everything that comes along with it: Ferris wheels, tractor pulls, pumpkins the size of Pavel Brendl and that more recent annual favorite, deep-fried hockey seasons.
It has become a rite of passage for the Carolina Hurricanes, getting out of town while the fair takes residence across the street. Both the Hurricanes and N.C. State have learned, through difficult experience, to avoid playing home games during the state fair because the logistics are a nightmare.
On Oct. 19, 2002, N.C. State hosted Duke at Carter-Finley Stadium and the Hurricanes hosted the New Jersey Devils on the same Saturday of the fair’s opening weekend. Some fans and fairgoers spent three hours stuck in traffic. The Devils didn’t even try get to the arena for the morning skate. Since then, the Hurricanes have made themselves scarce for the 10 days of the fair and gotten out of town for a week or two.
So Tuesday’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Buffalo Sabres was the Hurricanes’ final home game of the month. See you in November.
“You don’t think as a player, ‘Oh, the state fair is in town,’ ” said assistant coach and former Hurricanes captain Rod Brind’Amour, who went on six of these state-fair trips as a player. “Everybody has road trips. I never even thought about it to be honest with you. You just look at the schedule and you’re gone for 10 days. It’s all part of it.”
The Hurricanes have actually had decent results on these trips, other than an 0-2-2 run in 2009-10 that was entirely in character with that team’s 2-12-4 start. It’s the energy expended early in the season – the travel, the hours, the physical and mental wear and tear – that tends to take its toll. Aware of this, the team has managed to work with the NHL schedulers to get away from the 15-day sojourns of 2006 and 2007 and limit the damage to four or five games in an eight-day span.
This year’s five-game swing is perhaps less intimidating than most. While it begins with a quick overnight trip to the New York Rangers, the defending conference champions, it proceeds next week with four winnable Western Canadian games in seven days, against teams in situations not dissimilar to the Hurricanes – the Winnipeg Jets, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks.
That’s not exactly running the Anaheim-Los Angeles-San Jose gantlet in terms of degree of difficulty. Still, they’re road games and they’re packed together and they’re a significant challenge for an undermanned team that has managed a single point from its first three games.
“It can turn your season around, even though it’s early on,” Hurricanes defenseman Tim Gleason said. “We can change our season with a good trip. It’s a bonding time for our team and we’re looking for a turnaround, so this is a great time to do it.”
Not to mention, on a team this young, many players will be heading out on the road for a long trip for the very first time. Even Tuesday hero Zach Boychuk, who made his NHL debut on one of these trips in 2008 in Los Angeles, has never played in his hometown of Calgary with the Hurricanes. Others have never traveled this far for a game other than on a bus.
“Minimum, two suits,” was coach Bill Peters’ advice to the rookies. “Some of them will try to get away with one. We’ve got some time between games, maybe the Laundromat in Vancouver. They’ll be fine. These kids have been through it. They’re mature.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2014 at 4:39 PM with the headline "DeCock: When the fair comes to town, Hurricanes hit the road."