Shuffled schedule leaves tough Tampa task for Hurricanes
On paper, at least, the NHL’s newly constituted Central Division broke into two tiers going into the season. The contenders included the Carolina Hurricanes and everyone else but the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks. Those two non-playoff teams from the year before were expected to bring up the rear.
It was reasonable to expect, back in January, that if the Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars and Columbus Blue Jackets fought each other to a draw, and the Florida Panthers and Nashville Predators held their own and made things interesting, the very fine margins at the top of the division could well be decided by the teams that were most efficient plucking points off the bottom-dwellers.
Not all of that has gone as planned — the Blackhawks have been good, the Predators have not — and the Hurricanes have gone about things all backward anyway. They’ve been terrific against their top-shelf peers, going 7-1-0 against Tampa Bay, Dallas and Columbus, and merely adequate against the presumed also-rans. All of that made the sequence that began Friday night thanks to some ad hoc scheduling an unusually interesting one.
The Hurricanes had taken only four of eight available points off the Red Wings and resurgent Blackhawks, but took care of business against Chicago with a 5-3 home win Friday. They would have had another shot at the Blackhawks on Saturday, but the NHL on Friday — like Don King shuffling an undercard — decided to send the Blackhawks home early and bring in the Lightning.
So instead of hosting Chicago in the second half of a home-home back-to-back — a scenario in which the Hurricanes would have been heavily favored — they get the Stanley Cup champions on Saturday instead. And Monday. And again in Tampa on Wednesday. And again Thursday, in the second half of a road-road back-to-back that won’t favor their weary legs and will strain their goaltending depth with Petr Mrazek still out.
This four-game dose of the Bolts wasn’t originally on the schedule, but that’s how it has been piecemeal rearranged thanks to the Hurricanes’ COVID pause last month and the two games the Lightning couldn’t play in Dallas this week because of the winter weather nightmare there.
Planned or not, it’s an absolutely pivotal stretch of the schedule, almost like a playoff series in miniature. And by the time it’s over the Hurricanes will have a much better idea of where exactly they fit with this new group of division rivals.
Going into it, they fit neatly into a spot near the top thanks to Friday’s win, a game in which they soundly outplayed the Blackhawks only to give up two awkward goals at the end of the second period that let Chicago make a game of it. If James Reimer was at fault for either, he made up for it with some stellar work in the third, and Nino Niederreiter scored a pair of goals to continue his unbelievable run to start the season.
Under normal circumstances, Niederreiter’s nine goals in 15 games would put him on a 49-goal pace. That’s everything he was when he arrived in the spring of 2019 (for Victor Rask, an exchange that continues to boggle the mind) and everything he wasn’t for much of last season.
Niederreiter’s hot streak to start the season is one of many things that has gone right for the Hurricanes, and they’ll need that to continue in this run against Tampa Bay. There have been some rough spots over the past few games, whether in the form of goaltending miscues, bad penalties or sloppy special teams, and the Hurricanes will pay dearly for any such weakness against the Lightning.
“We’ve got to improve when we play teams like Tampa Bay,” Niederreiter said. “We have to play 60 minutes straight.”
Such is the impromptu challenge the Hurricanes face a mere 15 games into the season. They’ve done enough so far that there’s no risk of catastrophe, but the opportunity is there to send a message to the rest of the division and take control for good. It wasn’t one they expected to have, but it’s before them now.
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 10:26 PM.
