Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to all of our readers!

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? 

LaCouture to KHL

The Russians are taking all of our hockey players. First Matt Murley, now Dan LaCouture. The great TSN reports:

"Carolina Hurricanes forward Dan LaCouture is believed to have left the team for Russia, however, the Hurricanes remain unclear as to which Kontinental Hockey League team LaCouture is attempting to join.

The Hurricanes intend on suspending LaCouture, who was signed as a free agent in October, if he doesn’t have an immediate change of heart.

If LaCouture walks away from his contract with the Hurricanes this will fuel the ongoing feud between the KHL and the National Hockey League as, once again, the Kontinental Hockey League would have apparently abandoned its policy of respecting NHL contracts."

I really liked watching LaCouture play.  He had two goals in the eleven games he played for us. I think he deserved a better chance to play than he actually got and he must of felt like he was only going to play in the minors. This is probably the reason for him to leave for Russia. Plus, every sportsperson in Russia gets monster salaries. LaCouturov (My new nickname for him), as previously mentioned, will be the second player to leave the Canes this year as Matt Murley is currently playing for Amur. LaCouturov, is accustomed to playing as he has played in 43 games for the Swiss league. If he does play in Russia, I wish this 31 year old luck. 

Kaberle is back, Conboy sent down

Frank Kaberle was taken off Injured Reserve today. By doing this we send Timmy Conboy the agitator, back to Albany. Kaberle has been injured for so much time this season (and pretty much all of his career), I don't know why we still have him.  The unfortunate thing about sending Conboy down, is his willingness to stand up for the team will be gone. I will miss him! Canes Country makes a good point on several interesting subplots here.  

Canes get a sloppy win

We got a sloppy win. When the other team gets 11 penalties, I'd expect a win. It is pretty sad that we had 22 minutes of power play time and we were only leading by one late in the third. Eric Staal had two great goals but was driven head first into the boards in the 2nd period. He was already bobbling his head. Made those bobble heads are like voodoo dolls. Fortunately, he was back on the ice in one or two shifts. Both goalies had a few nice saves and a few easy goals. It was a sloppy win, but a win.

Roddy: Either step up your game or retire

Is he actually paying attention to the game?

In the last 3 seasons Rod Brind'Amour has been +15 and he has won two Selke trophies, for best defensive forward. In 30 games this season Roddy is -21 (Yes, you read right) and his defense looks 10 times worse. How do you go from one of the best in the league to the WORST in the league. Dmitri Kalinin, The next lowest +/-  in the league, is at -16 and Ray Whitney the next lowest on the Canes is at -7. Rod is our captain and he uses a lot of our salary cap up. If something does not change, we may need to move him or force him to retire. Please leave your  comments on what we should do with him.

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?

Cam Ward is back

TSN has announced that the Carolina Hurricanes have activated Cam Ward from injured reserve. This is sort of a thank god moment because at least he won't flop on a shootout (See highlights below).  This means we have returned Justin Peters to Albany. I would have loved to see Peters play (especially after Philly caught up yesterday) but we stayed with Michael Leighton. 

Uhh.. Yeah...

OK. There is only one thing that sums up this game. WTF? I mean seriously how do you blow a 5-1 lead? Was it because Mo-ron did not pull Leighton? Was it because our defense looked like they were high (Maybe because we were actually winning)? Who really knows? When you are completely dominating a game you keep playing hard not try and keep them from scoring. It is just ridiculous. For the first two periods we were stellar after that, not so much. That #12 finally showed up, I don't remember his name but he wasn't playing that bad. We passed and did almost everything right until the third period. When we lost the Casey Borer fight (I did not know he was a fighter) I was becoming mad. When Scott Hartnell got a hat trick, all it did was make me furious. Below the highlights are my reactions to each goal.

1-0: "WHOA! Staal did something productive! I wish I got my Canes Country Points though." 

2-0: "Matt Cullen? I put him as number one to be traded."

2-1:"Ahh! Jeff Carter stop being so good. Let someone else score. At least we are still winning. Oh it was Hartnell. OK."

3-1:"SERGEI SAMSONOV! What a goal! Right off the face-off too."

4-1:"This game is looking to be a blowout. If we keep scoring like this, I should have a fun blog post tomorrow" 

5-1:"Staal showed up to play tonight. That's a first."

5-2:"@#$%. Hartnell. Again? Come on!"

5-3:"What the @#$%. Hartnell got a @#$%in Hat trick! Oh @#$%!"

5-4:"NO! Why? They are gonna catch up! Why the @#$% have we not pulled Leighton?"

5-5:"Really, they just scored? Are you kidding? Hello Mo-Ron call your @#$%in timeout or something. We cannot go to a shootout or we are dead."

6-5:"Gaaah! You @#$%in @#$%head. What kind of bull@#$% was that? Michael Leighton stop trying to do the worm. Damit. 

Canes recall Bryan Rodney

Apparently Seids is not doing great. The Carolina Hurricanes announced they have recalled Bryan Rodney. Rodney did very well in training camp, outlasting Casey Borer and Brett Carson. Bubba at Canes Country, made an interesting point. He pointed out that Pitkanen and Corvo have 670 combined games of NHL experience while the other 4 defenseman called up have a total of 35 games played. I hope we win!