Red & Black Hockey

Ruutu, Cole and the Canes snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

by David Lee on 11/19/09 at 09:56 PM ET
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On Thursday night, the Hurricanes hosted the Maple Leafs with a good chance to stretch their points streak to four games. Although things didn’t go well early on, they battled back. Although they gave up a would-be game winning goal with 30 seconds remaining in the third, they never gave up. Erik Cole scored with two seconds remaining, and then the Finns took care of business in the shootout. Carolina emerged with a gutsy 6-5 win and they have crawled out of the Eastern conference cellar. Baby steps.

The Canes spotted the Leafs one goal, allwing Matt Stajan to score on the Leafs second shot of the game at 1:01 of the first. Lee Stempniak added one at 14:21 and Mikail Grabovski another at 18:26. Things, seemingly, were about to fall apart. However, as they have done repeatedly this month, they refused to let a two or three goal deficit cancel their will to compete. Instead of folding like a rented futon, they displayed a little sisu and fought back. And won.

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Tags: Carolina+Hurricanes, Erik+Cole, sisu, Tim+Gleason, Toronto+Maple+Leafs, Tuomo+Ruutu,

Canes, having cap issues, place Ward on LTIR

by David Lee on 11/19/09 at 08:31 AM ET
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Although the Hurricanes are far from the most injured team in the NHL (Carolina has 57 man-games lost compared to 109 for the Canucks), they are starting to run into some cap issues. Carolina started the season a little over their own budget, but with plenty of room under the cap. That’s no longer the case.

To ease the strain, Carolina has placed Cam Ward on the Long Term Injured Reserve and has recalled Justin Peters from Albany. This allows a portion of Ward’s salary to be withheld from the cap hit. Presumably, this has been done retroactive to November 8.

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Tags: Cam+Ward, Carolina+Hurricanes, injuries, Manny+Legace, salary+cap,

Habs top Canes in shootout thriller, Leighton hurt

by David Lee on 11/17/09 at 10:29 PM ET
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On Tuesday, the Hurricanes earned one standings point and lost another goaltender. Carolina had a one goal lead late in the third period, but Manny Legace gave up a bad goal to Sergei Kostitsyn which sent the game into overtime. In the overtime period, Carolina had a man advantage for the final two minutes of play, but failed to cash in on the four-on-three advantage.

The shootout went six rounds, with Maxim Lapierre getting the goal and Carey Price making an improbable skate save on Matt Cullen.

Carolina has earned points in three straight games, and Brandon Sutter scored again. These are good things. But the rather bad news is that Michael Leighton suffered an apparent groin injury in the second period.

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Tags: Brandon+Sutter, Carolina+Hurricanes, injuries, Manny+Legace, Michael+Leighton, Montreal+Canadiens,

Canes embark on roadtrip with dads

by David Lee on 11/17/09 at 12:02 AM ET
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When the Hurricanes travel to Montréal on Tuesday, it’ll be part of their annual roadtrip with the dads. A lot of teams around the league do this where once a season, the fathers (or some other family member) join their son (or nephew or whatever) on the road. They room together, and all the dads bond with each other, and they have a lot of fun.

Earlier today, I pointed out the obvious that Brent Sutter won’t be joining Brandon on this trip since the Flames have a home game against the Avs. While Henry Staal is the second most famous of the dads, Bob Brind’Amour is the star of the show. Everyone loves Bob. Although Fox Sports Carolinas isn’t covering this game, John Forslund and Tripp Tracy will still argue about which one of them gets to go to the senior prom with Rod’s dad.

Still, this isn’t fun and games for everyone. While this is a really fun time for everyone else, it’s going to be a somber time for Jussi Jokinen, whose father passed away in March.

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Tags: Carolina+Hurricanes,

The streak is over!

by David Lee on 11/15/09 at 06:04 PM ET
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On Sunday, the Hurricanes finally ended their horrific 14-game winless streak. It wasn’t the prettiest win in the world, but since there’s no column in the standings for “ugly win”, we’ll chalk it up in the “W” column. Twice, the Canes had three goal leads in the second period. With 6:15 to play in the second, the Canes had a 4-1 lead, but the next eight minutes of gameplay were a train wreck. Fortunately, the Canes emerged out of the shootout with a win, and a tremendous weight was lifted off of the RBC Center. The kind of weight that’s lifted only when one’s career depends on it.

The weight was lifted off the players, the fans, the PA announcer, the hot dog vendors, the organist, and just about anybody who has any connection to this team. The celebration on the ice and in the stands was sort of like the ones we’ve seen after winning playoff series, and at this point, it feels about the same.

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Tags: Brandon+Sutter, Carolina+Hurricanes, Michael+Leighton, Minnesota+Wild, Ray+Whitney, Tuomo+Ruutu,

Canes streak continues

by David Lee on 11/14/09 at 08:46 PM ET
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On Friday night, the Hurricanes dropped their 14th consecutive game, even if they managed to force overtime. Since October 9, they have gone 0-10-4. However, the news isn’t all bad.

On Wednesday, the Canes overcame a two goal deficit only to lose 5-2. On Friday, they overcame a horrible first period in which they fell behind 3-0. Tim Gleason took a really dumb double minor early in the game which ended up spotting the Islanders two goals, but it was his goal late in the third that forced overtime. The Canes were 14 seconds away from going to shootout when defenseman Bryan Rodney, recently called up from Albany, committed a bad turnover deep in the Canes zone. This led directly to the winning goal and although the Canes looked like they would end the horrible streak, they added one more tick mark to the locker room wall.

The good news is that some of the forwards are starting to play well. With five (3/2) points in his last seven games, Brandon Sutter has looked like a Sutter, and Tuomo Ruutu is starting to assert himself. And for only the second time in this dry spell, the Canes scored more than two goals. That’s a start.

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Tags: Brandon+Sutter, Carolina+Hurricanes, losing+streak, Manny+Legace., Minnesota+Wild, New+York+Islanders, Tuomo+Ruutu,

Winless streak reaches 13; Conboy placed on waivers

by David Lee on 11/12/09 at 08:21 PM ET
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On Wednesday, the Hurricanes stretched their losing streak to seven games and their winless streak to an astounding 13 games. After falling behind 2-0 to the Kings, they tied the game in the third period, but everything fell apart, and they ended up losing 5-2. Tuomo Ruutu had the only two goals for the Canes.

At times, Manny Legace looked good. At times, he looked worse than Johnny Crackers. He, for absolutely no reason, came so far out of his net on a couple of occasions that I actually thought he was going on a beer run. Again, though, it wasn’t bad goaltending that lost the game. The defense left Legace out to dry on two power play goals. In the offensive zone, not much good happened. Right now, as fragile as this team is, the only way they’re going to win any games is when the final score is 2-1. The defense isn’t playing well enough to make that happen. And the forwards certainly aren’t playing well enough to get into a track meet with anybody.

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Tags: Carolina+Hurrincanes, Tim+Conboy,

The Legace hazard (or: It’s just Manny being Manny)

by David Lee on 11/09/09 at 09:45 PM ET
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On Monday morning, the Hurricanes announced what everyone knew was coming. They have signed 36-year old veteran goaltender Manny Legace to a one-year two-way contract. He will be paid the league minimum of $500k at the NHL level and $105k at the AHL level. The one-time Stanley Cup winner was last seen in Atlanta’s system on a tryout contract with the Chicago Wolves of the AHL. This, of course, came on the heels of Cam Ward suffering a deep laceration on his left thigh on Saturday. Ward has been ruled out for at least four weeks. The signing was pretty much an emergency situation, and given the price tag, I don’t think they could have done any better.

While some people are making light of the fact that Legace was drafted by (but never played for) the Whale, there’s a far more alarming thing about Legace that should concern all of us. There’s a really bizarre trend with his health. Specifically, he’s never been able to stay healthy in December

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Tags: Carolina+Hurricanes, injuries, Manny+Legace,

No goalie move yet

by David Lee on 11/08/09 at 05:37 PM ET
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On Sunday, the Hurricanes announced that they have reassigned forward Zach Boychuk to the Albany River Rats. This, supposedly, will be to make room for Ray Whitney to return from his “upper body injury”. All reports indicate that The Wizard will be back in the lineup on Veterans Day. This is a bit of good news.

There’s a big surprise, though. Even when Cam Ward was kept overnight in Columbus, and then kept for an extra day, there have been no roster moves at the goalie position. I assumed that Justin Peters would immediately be called up to back up Michael Leighton, but so far, Leighton is by himself. The Hurricanes have indicated that they’re interested in signing a free agent or trading for an NHL goaltender. Third on the list of solutions to the problem was “call up Justin Peters”.

Whatever they do, they will have to do it very quickly so that they can have two goaltenders in practice. Presumably, if no move is made by Monday’s practice, Fox Sports Carolinas color commentator Tripp Tracy will serve as one of the practice goalies. Which he will talk about all season after that.

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Tags: Carolina+Hurricanes,

When will the nightmare end?

by David Lee on 11/07/09 at 11:39 PM ET
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On Saturday night, the Hurricanes lost more than just the game. For the third time in the last four games, they scored the “all-important” first goal. For the second time in as many nights, they led after one and looked great after two. For the twelfth time in a row, though, they ended up with a loss. Not only are the losses piling up, but so are the injuries. And tonight, the Canes suffered an injury loss that they can’t afford: Cam Ward.

Early in the first period, Ward was cut by the skate of Blue Jackets captain Rick Nash, who was skating through the goal crease. Although it was well inside the crease, the contact was incidental, and nobody will blame Nash for causing the injury. Ward had to be rushed to the hospital, where he was stitched up and where he will be held overnight.

In March of 2007, Ward suffered a similar injury in a game against the Rangers. The fear was that he was going to miss the remainder of the season and that he wouldn’t be able to play for Canada in the IIHF World Championships. He only missed three games and played very well in the IIHF tournament. Hopefully this fall, he’ll be able to make a similar speedy return to the lineup.

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Tags: Cam+Ward, Carolina+Hurricanes, injuries, losing+streak,

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About Red & Black Hockey

David Lee is a restaurant manager with an unused degree in political science. He can be found at Carolina Hurricanes games, Scrabble tournaments and indie-rock shows. Sometimes, all in the same day.

David has contributed to CBC.ca for their Stanley Cup playoff coverage in 2006 and to the New York Times Slapshot blog for theirs in 2008. Red and Black Hockey was founded in July of 2005.