For Hurricanes, there’s no way to pick up where they left off, but they’re still trying.
The goal, all along, was to pretend the four months never passed. To find some way to pick up where the Carolina Hurricanes left off, back in March, as if they were on their way from Detroit to New Jersey to the Toronto bubble without stopping.
When the NHL hit pause, the Hurricanes had hit their stride. It was only a three-game winning streak, even if one of the games was a four-goal win at the Pittsburgh Penguins, but it felt like more than that. They had bounced back from a four-game losing streak in emphatic fashion. They had learned to play without Dougie Hamilton. They had learned to play without Brett Pesce. They had learned to play behind both goalies. They were learning to play with their trade-deadline arrivals.
More than all of that, they were closer to the identity that brought them so much success a year earlier, something that had proven elusive in the fall and winter.
And then everything came to a halt because of COVID-19, which hit close to home for the Hurricanes when John Forslund and another staffer had to quarantine because of their potential exposure in Detroit.
Not that there was anything good about the timing, but it was particularly bad for the Hurricanes.
When things did restart and the Hurricanes got back on the ice, trying to recapture that feeling was as much a priority as anything.
“I wanted to pick up where we left off, but that was not going to be viable after a four-month layoff,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Tuesday. “But even if you don’t pick up where you left off, we wanted to prepare and practice as if we did just come off the last game of that season. How do you replicate it? That’s what we’ve been trying to do in practice.
“We’ve had the same kind of practices, the same kind of intensity. We’ll see if it worked. We had a plan. We definitely talked about it and worked with it.”
It’s a nebulous concept that goes beyond Xs and Os and schemes and tactics. In some ways, it’s as simple as limiting the quality of the chances they allow. In others, it’s more complicated and tough to pin down. When the Hurricanes are on their game, as they were in March, they’re playing with an intensity and focus that saps opponents of their will and strength. It’s what brought them so much success in the playoffs last season, and it comes with even better special teams this season.
It took a while for the Hurricanes get to that point this season, in part because of the personnel changes over the summer, but they did finally get there.
But by the time the Hurricanes and New York Rangers open the playoffs on Saturday, it will have been more than 20 weeks since the last real game. Stanley Cup champions have had shorter waits from lifting the Cup to defending it.
It’s obviously an unprecedented problem in an unprecedented set of circumstances, with just the one exhibition game Wednesday against the Washington Capitals to see if they were able to do it. And then, it’s right back into the mix with the highest stakes of all.
“Now it’s just one and then we’re straight to the playoffs, straight to the real deal,” Jaccob Slavin said.
This may be the biggest challenge the Hurricanes face, above and beyond anything else. While they wait on the re-injured Hamilton, they can’t wait to recapture their identity.
