Never Underestimate....

[Anybodyhome]

During the last 5 minutes or so while I was watching the game last night, I began thinking about Carolina's losses as I certainly expected another at the hands of the Sens.

The Canes have 9 losses/2 OT losses: Florida (2), Philadelphia, San Jose, Seattle, Ottawa, Vancouver, Washington, Dallas, Columbus and New Jersey. Any idea how many of those opponents have winning records? How about 4- Florida, San Jose, Washington and Dallas. 

We hear the phrase tossed around the NFL schedule every week- good teams win the games they're supposed to. If that same phrase were to be repeated in the Carolina Hurricanes circles, there might be some head scratching. When 6 of the 9 losses at this point in the season are at the hands of sub-.500 teams, these may come back to haunt the Canes when it comes to home ice advantage in the playoffs. 

Is it a mental let-down after going to town on 2 of the league's best teams in the Rangers and Bruins, followed by an OT win against Vegas that the next games against the Senators, Devils, Kraken and others are hard to mentally get up for?

[Harbingers]

We still have the same lingering issue from last year that if a goalie is curb stomping us we just can’t get anything going. Our previous losses before Columbus(honestly I don’t even count that one. We showed them up on New Year’s Day. They were going to return the favor come hell or high water.) Were all pretty close games minus the first Florida game, we had some fight in us. The only losses that I really frown upon our effort were Florida 1 and New Jersey.

The trend in our recent games though is disturbing slightly. We are not our usual selves, I think it has to do with the weird schedule coming up and the Allstar break. We haven’t found that routine we had pre Covid break. 
 

I think if we can get through the Allstar break and IF Rod does a basic mini-camp and we kind of treat it like last season from here on out we’ll be ok. If there’s one thing Rod is notorious for it’s mid normal season slumps. So far we have staved one off for now. But you can see it in the players the past games. They are running out of gas by the end of the second period. We are on paper one of if not the fastest team in league. But the Devils and Ottawa skated circles around us.

I mean hell, Slavin took a hooking on one of his classic poke checks yesterday. Which I still call as bullshit cause it’s Slavin, I’m pretty damn sure he touched the puck or at least was very close to its general vicinity before his stick came up. But ya, his stick did come off the ice before he was parallel with the player.
 

You may be right we may just not be taking the little guys seriously, we may be putting all the effort into our big competition because as, “The Hockey Guy” puts it, we are just generally waiting for the playoffs at this point in Rods tenure. I don’t think Rod is the issue though. I think the players are just getting lax mentally. And when we face a goalie on his game, we basically pack it in after a period and a half.
 

We are built to play with a lead, it’s worked so far, we gotta show we can play from a deficit(we could last season as long as it wasn’t Vas we were against) and we have to figure our #2 goalie out. 
 

Thoughts are disjointed sorry. Read your post earlier and have been brewing on it. 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Harbingers

[Anybodyhome]

17 hours ago, Harbingers said:

I mean hell, Slavin took a hooking on one of his classic poke checks yesterday. Which I still call as bullshit cause it’s Slavin, I’m pretty damn sure he touched the puck or at least was very close to its general vicinity before his stick came up. But ya, his stick did come off the ice before he was parallel with the player.

That was a bullshit call any way you look at it.

It was OT and it was Jacob Slavin, a blue-liner who has taken maybe 5 penalties in his entire life. If it's that close, the benefit of the doubt goes to the player. Sure, technically by the book, it was a hook, I guess. But c'mon, OT and Slavin? Very few refs in the league are making that call.