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

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Canes-Cats tonight

Tonight, two of the East's bubble teams will duke it out in the RBC Center for the privilege of keeping their playoff hopes alive. Florida's on Fire*, having earned 15 points in their last 10 games. They remain five points out of eighth place, and in order to determine their own fate, they pretty much need to run the table.
If you've got the shells, build a statue to yourself down here


Carolina, who is in ninth by virtue of tiebreaker, won't have to be quite that strong. However, they'll need to win every one of these games against teams below them in the standings.

After the injury to Cam Ward, I expected Jason Peters to be called up from Albany. Either we're not confident enough in him, or Albany isn't confident enough in their other goaltender (who is property of the Avalanche), because he wasn't called up. Instead, Carolina made the call down to the Florida Everblades of the ECHL. Craig Kowalski, who surely is called "Killer" by his teammates will have his cup of coffee. Incidentally, the injury to Ward isn't as bad as originally thought. Now they say that he might return after missing just one week.
Sleeping amid smoke coz the dirt's on fire down here


John Grahame will be handed the reins and asked to be the #1, and I shoud guess ONLY goaltender for the next seven or eight games. If something happens to him, we'll have an ECHL goaltender in the pipes.

Now is the time for the Carolina goal scorers to do what they do. Eric/k, Viva and Ray-Ray will have to step up. Carolina will need to win games, and they will probably have to score four or more goals to do so.

Now is also the time for Carolina's stagnant power play to wake up. They've converted one out of their last 37,432,551 chances. I exaggerate a little, but suffice to say it's been bad. Conversely, their penalty kill has been amazing. They've only allowed one PP goal in the last nine games, if I remember that stat correctly.
Florida, Florida, Florida's on fire


Puck drop will be at 7:00. I'll be working and DVRing the game.

*Florida's on Fire is a song by Chapel Hill based indie-rock band Superchunk. The italicized quotes are lines from that song, which has nothing to do with hockey. However, their frontman Mac McCaughan is an avid hockey fan and a Hurricanes season ticket holder.

2 comments:

nomadologist said...

Wow, I never thought I'd see Superchunk referenced on a hockey blog. Kudos to you, sir!

I'd love to run into Mac at a Cane's game. I'll have to look out for him (don't look at me like that; I said "look out for," not "stalk") at the RBC Center, now.

d-lee said...

Yeah... I ran into him in the parking lot during the SCF and we chatted briefly about the RBC Center's use of "Punch Me Harder".

I think with the new Portastatic record, he might not be going to games so much this season, but you might run into him anyway.

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