Games 3-4: Survival

Mmmm, crow. Mmmmm, tasty crow.

The Carolina Hurricanes withstood absolutely everything the Montreal Canadiens could throw at them for two games, and came out of la belle province with two wins and a tied series. Cam Ward was nothing short of stellar in Game 3, and strong if not required to be as spectacular in Game 4, while captain Rod Brind’Amour was everywhere when the Canes needed him. No home team has won a game this series, but Carolina needs to reverse that trend at least once as they regained home ice tonight.

Refereeing incompetence played a role again in Game 4. Habs fans will scream about Justin Williams again escaping 4 or 5 for an inadvertent high stick in the third period. To this Caniac, though, that pales next to, after a Habs rally to tie, Carolina having a go-ahead goal in the second period waved off after trail ref Tim Peel claimed first goaltender interference, then to have blown the whistle from the neutral zone during a goal-mouth scrum. As the front ref earlier in the period, Peel missed an obvious penalty called by trailer Don van Massenhoven; Carolina’s FSN South TV team of John Forslund and Tripp Tracy speculated during the second intermission that Peel was trying to pay van Massenhoven back, if screwing the Canes in the process. For that matter, Carolina’s true go-ahead goal in the third could just as easily have been disallowed for pre-goal contact that was less incidental, if not interfering directly in the play.

Some other themes have shown up that should be worth paying attention to as the series progresses:

• Montreal’s changing tactics against Cam Ward: in Game 2 and the beginning of Game 3, the Habs went absolutely bombs away, shooting early, high and often in open ice. As that didn’t work, late game their strategy mutated, especially on the power play, to filling the slot with screens (moving or not) and working everything outside. Finally, they treated Ward with some respect and returned to their more conventional offense. Eric Staal joked earlier in the week that he wasn’t sure the rookie goalie, his teammate last year in Lowell, had a pulse by how unflappable he’d been as he was thrown into the starting slot on the road, down two games in one of hockey’s temples. I’d thought Ward wasn’t ready, especially by his very limited second-half time; I’m happy to be wrong.
• Carolina’s overall faceoff weakness: Rod Brind’Amour is the only reliable faceoff man for the Canes right now. Kevyn Adams and Eric Staal both take the occasional pressure-situation drop, but both are consistently weak, Staal probably more so than the defensive stalwart Adams.
• Exit Tevvy, enter LaRose: Carolina has played with six defensemen for the past three games, rather than the seven usually offered by Peter Laviolette during the regular season. The missing man has been the most offensive (and least defensive) of the Canes’ blueliners, Oleg Tverdovsky. In games 3 and 4, the replacement has been winger Chad LaRose, completing the defensive/”energy” fourth line of Kevyn and Craig Adams, and LaRose clearly has his coach’s confidence: he’s even taken several penalty-kill shifts with Kevyn Adams up top.

OLN’s Brian Engblom, in the between-games report, said Carolina is back to its regular-season fire. I don’t think so. In these two games, the Canes have played significantly tighter than especially in the post-Olympic stretch. The pace hasn’t slackened, but the open ice that Carolina played for most of the year, to the occasional detriment of its defense, isn’t going to appear in this series. They’ve had to adapt, and they’ve done so well against a Montreal team that has played well throughout.

See you Sunday night…