Carolina Hurricanes desperate to pick up where they left off, anyway, anyhow, anywhere
It wasn’t just that the Carolina Hurricanes were on a three-game winning streak when the NHL was forced to “pause” its season because of the coronavirus. It was that, nearing the end of the regular season, they had finally started to recapture the identity that brought them so much success a year ago.
It had been a long and elusive quest, but as February rounded into March, the Hurricanes were rounding into form. Finally. They won both games of a road-road back-to-back against the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins, rolled over the Detroit Red Wings and were in New Jersey to play the Devils when everything shut down — in part, amid fears Hurricanes employees had been exposed to COVID-19 in Detroit.
The Hurricanes had 14 games to go, and almost a month later, they’re desperate to find a way to play any or all of them, or at the very least get their chance to post back-to-back playoff seasons for the first time in 18 years. At the time the NHL shut down on March 11, the 38-25-5 Hurricanes were in the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, both by total points (81) and points percentage (.596) -- the latter to be used if the NHL can’t finish the regular season, since teams had played varying numbers of games.
“For me the importance is to finish the season, in some form or fashion,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “And if they can’t fit in regular-season games, there has to be, for me, I’d like to see a conclusion, someone is awarded the winner. We’ve put in 68 games, three-quarters of the season plus, we need to finish this year out, just to have some sort of closure before we move on.”
And to do that, Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell said they’re willing to play along with even the NHL’s most outlandish proposals, one of which commissioner Gary Bettman has acknowledged has included sequestering teams at neutral sites in out-of-the-way places like Grand Forks, N.D., Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Manchester, N.H., to try to finish out the regular season and/or playoffs.
It’s ludicrous, of course. The NHL isn’t the only pro league desperately searching for a “coronavirus loophole,” with baseball proposing a similar plan to start its season in Arizona. All it would take is one positive test to shut the whole thing down, and once the logistics come into focus, it requires so many more people than just teams and players and officials to be impossible.
But at this point, given the stakes, the Hurricanes are willing to entertain just about any notion that keeps the season alive.
“If you look around what’s going on around our country there’s probably some cities you don’t think you can play in,” Waddell said. “It’s all obvious, too, some of those cities. If you’re going to play regular-season games it might make sense to come up with some neutral-site places. Obviously you’re bringing 31 teams back you’re going to have multiple sites you have to go to.
“But I think this goes into the bigger picture that (Bettman) keeps talking about, playing regular-season games, and if it means going to certain cities that don’t have shutdowns anymore, states, cities, states, counties, then that makes sense for the league as a whole. We’d be in favor of that also.”
If and when the season does resume in some form, the Hurricanes should have Dougie Hamilton and James Reimer available, Waddell said Thursday, even if Brett Pesce is still rehabbing his shoulder after surgery. Both Hamilton and Reimer would be skating by now, Waddell said, if they could.
It just adds more fuel to a fire the Hurricanes would like to reignite, any way they can.
“Things were looking positive and obviously we had to pause it all, but I liked where our team was for sure,” Brind’Amour said.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 4:00 PM.
