For the Hurricanes, this January loss felt too much like April and May past
Not every night has to be a referendum on the Carolina Hurricanes’ season. Not every frustration is a harbinger of eventual doom. Weird things can happen in any single game. It’s why they play 82 of them.
That said, it was almost impossible not to see Sunday’s 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild like a visit from the Ghost of Playoffs Past, because it was all too familiar, embodying everything that didn’t go right in their past two eliminations, albeit against an inferior opponent that found a way to capitalize on the Hurricanes’ too-frequent errors.
As they did against the New York Rangers two years ago, and as they did in the agonizingly narrow sweep at the hands of the Florida Panthers last spring, the Hurricanes dominated play, piled up chances, peppered the opposing goalie and walked away with almost nothing to show for it. And when they did finally even the score in the third period, they gave the lead right back on the next shift.
All of which, in a vacuum, happens. It does. To good teams and bad. Filip Gustavsson didn’t have to stop 64 shots like Juuse Saros, but he was good enough, beaten only by Martin Necas and Michael Bunting on the receiving end of some tic-tac-toe passing, both applying the finish the Hurricanes otherwise lacked, especially on an 0-for-4 power play that had plenty of chances.
Nevertheless, it’s also inarguable that games like this, when the Hurricanes toil away, check most if not all the boxes and end up with nothing bring back too many bad memories. The scars are still too fresh, too deep. Perhaps, even, for them. Unlike Friday night, when they stayed patient and were eventually rewarded for a stifling performance with a win over the Detroit Red Wings, the Hurricanes got jumpy and sloppy in the third period of this one. And paid for it.
“We had a good start and wanted more out of it,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “Part of it’s my fault, too. I was probably getting too frustrated. We’ve got to stay with our game. The third period we were just kind of frustrated and angry and flat. We were just OK at the end. But we still had a chance.”
Staal, who hasn’t scored since before Christmas, had as good a chance to tie it as anyone, steering a backhand off the post during a late flurry immediately before Kirill Kaprizov’s clear got through Brent Burns and curled into the untended net at the other end of the ice, his third of the night and the first of two empty-netters for the Wild. But just about everyone had a chance, at some point.
Teuvo Teravainen was in alone racing Gustavsson for the puck and chipped it over his left shoulder but not below the bar. Burns was teed up twice from close range on a late power play and couldn’t hit the net. The list goes on and on. Even Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour left himself open to second-guessing, sending his fourth line out after Bunting’s goal made it 2-2. That line got pinned in its own end as Brendan Lemieux turned the puck over twice before the Wild scored an absolute back-breaker.
“That’s the NHL,” Brind’Amour said. “You can’t do it.”
This one couldn’t be pinned on goaltending, either. Antti Raanta was fine, let down by his teammates on the two Kirill Kaprizov goals he allowed and stopping two other great Wild chances among his 14 saves. He didn’t have much to do. What he had to do, he did well enough. Goaltending has been a huge issue for the Hurricanes this season, but it wasn’t Sunday.
Because of that, the level of frustration was higher than it might have been otherwise. The Hurricanes were in total control of the game after one period, even if they somehow found themselves on even terms at 1-1, and not only failed to press their advantage but started cutting corners and let their game slip.
“Usually if we play our game, like we did in the first, and continue with that, teams kind of just give in,” Staal said. “We didn’t really stay on the hammer and continue to drive it down their throat. Then it kind of became a 50-50 third period and they end up getting the right bounce.”
You can talk all you want about the process being more important than the results after a game like this, but that only works if you fully embrace the process. That part of it, the wavering, was unfamiliar to the Hurricanes of late. So, for that matter, was the rest of it for a team that had won seven of nine before Sunday and still has as good a chance as anyone to win the division.
Nothing that happened against the WIld changes any of that. There’s a lot of season yet to be played. Sunday had nothing to do with how the last two seasons had ended. It just felt the same way.
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