Week in Review

I have not been blogging in a while, but let me catch you guys up on what happened this past week. In a 2-1 OT win over Florida, we got back a newly recharged Frank Kaberle. Joe Corvo, one of our best players as of late, had a goal and assist and Rod Brind'Amour notched his 700th career assist. Our power play finally looked as if it is doing some as we scored in the first period off a Justin Williams shot. It was 1-0 until late in the third when ex-cane Cory Stillman intercepted one of Williams's passes and scored on Ward. Joe Corvo pulled one of the coolest moves I have ever seen him do on our 37th shot, and he knocked in the puck backhand. Both Tim Gleason and Brandon Sutter got in fights. Brandon Sutter's fight was his first in the NHL and Tim Gleason pummeled his guy. Seidenberg deserved the 32+ minutes of ice time he got as he blocked 5 shots. 

On Saturday, we lost 4-2 against the best team in the East. They gave us our first loss in 6 games but we put up a fight keeping the game within one goal for a long time. We got our first goal from Joni Pitkanen as he received a nice pass from Rod Brind'Amour. Boston tied it about halfway through the game when Marc Savard did some nice moves and scored. Dennis Seidenberg laid a big hit on Patrice Bergeron and he has a concussion. After, David Krejci and Shawn Thornton added on to the score, Ray Whitney had a nice goal. We tried hard for the extra goal, but they got an empty netter. Ward looked sharp in net except on the Thornton goal. I also noticed Pitkanen played decently the entire game. According to LSB, Dan LaCouture told Jeff Daniels he is staying in Albany. 

In a 3-2 Overtime win vs. Montreal, the Ruutu-Staal-Samsonov line dominated the game with 7 total points. Each had a goal and during their average 19:21 of ice time they all made nice plays. Neither team completely dominated the game, but there was a lot of nice plays and big hits. Roman Hamrlik and Matt D'Agostini each had a goal for Montreal. Chad LaRose got more playing time but we saw less of Brandon Sutter and Patrick Eaves. Who said Maurice is that bad at 4-2-3 since he has gotten here? 

Rangers 3, Canes 2

As expected the Carolina Hurricanes lost. It was a lot closer than I thought going to a 5th round of shootouts proved to much for the Canes. We definitely had our chances and the Rangers definitely had theirs. We still didn't score on the power play but we looked better. The goaltending was a work of art and that made the game much more nerve-racking. A few thing I noticed:

• Thank god Cam Ward is back. He played SO much better than Michael Leighton (especially on the shootout) 

• Joe Corvo is the king of Penalty Killing. He is undeniably our last line of defense.

• Justin Williams, played without question his best game this season. His 15:34 of game time allowed him to make nice passes and creative plays. 

• Is Chris Drury a figure skater also. On that game winning shootout goal he skated the entire way on one foot. Nice shot, by the way.
  
• Did we lose our away jerseys? Why are we wearing our alternate jerseys to away games?

Canes Recall Brett Carson

The Carolina Hurricanes have recalled Brett Carson to replace the injured Nic Wallin. He has 53 points in 163 Career games for the Albany River Rats. He is a great player and should be fun to watch. He joins fellow River Rats Borer and Conboy, Corvo, Pitkanen and Babchuk.