A Carolina Hurricanes blog with occasional news about the rest of the NHL.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Hockey Night in Carolina: Canes v Sens

The undefeated Senators come to town tonight. I didn't have this game in my package, but the prospect of seeing the best team in the league and some friends wanting to go prompted me to pick up some extra tickets.

Here are my keys to the game:
  1. Stay out of penalty trouble. The Sens are good enough at even strength. We don't need to give them too many man advantages. Our penalty killing has been great thus far, albeit against weaker teams. We really need to keep it up on that end.

  2. Apply pressure while on the PP. Now that we've got Ray Whitney in the lineup, we should be able to run the power play very well. Moving the puck around isn't good enough; we have to create traffic out front (Josef Vasicek, are you reading this?) and put a lot of shots on goal.

  3. Get Josef Vasicek in the scoring column. Only one assist thus far. Staal, Cole, Stillman and Roddy can't do it all. Big Joe is way too talented to not be producing.

  4. Goaltending Assuming Cam Ward will sit this one out, we need Martin Gerber to have a great game. There will be goals. There will be multiple goals. He can't get rattled, though. Most importantly, he's gotta control those rebounds, and the occasional errant tip from one of our d-men.

  5. Defense Aaron Ward has had a terrific season so far. He and Mikey C have been playing a very tough and clean brand of defense. They need to keep it up.


I know that in a keys to the game type post, I'm supposed to say stuff like "Contain Jason Spezza" and "Don't get mesmerized by Heatley's eye". I actually think that special teams will be the difference in this game, so that's why I focused on that stuff more than more specific player focus.

Details and pictures when I return.

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