First and foremost, here's hoping that Brandon Sutter just got his bell rung on Weight's open ice hit, and that the news tomorrow morning will be good. It was encouraging to see him leave the ice on his own feet, but any speculation on what exactly this means is just a guess.
When will the NHL get it and make any hit to the head a big no-no? The NFL outlawed helmet to helmet hits awhile back and at last check the league did not turn into a bunch of sissies exchanging flowers at midfield during the coin flip. Making any hit to the head an automatic 5-minute major with reviews for fines and suspensions would just clean things up. Doug Weight is generally an honest player. But when a player and the puck are arriving in the same place, he needs to make a play obviously. And within the current rules, the hit to Sutter was unfortunately a clean (by strict interpretation of the rules) hit.
And that is simply wrong.
As for the hockey game around the Sutter hit, after watching the game, I felt like I had been to the circus. Some of it was the fun variety, but too much of it was more the "having weird-looking clowns in your face after you ate some bad combination of popcorn and cotton candy." I sort of enjoyed it because we got 2 points, but I am not sure I ever want to do it again.
First, the simple stuff:
1) Ward was hungry and good. As I said before, I think Ward will benefit greatly if a stretch of mediocre hockey results in time to sit and stew rather than being thrown back into the fire. For a competitive guy like Ward, losing his job even temporarily takes anything negative from poor play and turns it into hunger. Reference exhibit A tonight of what that leads to. He was great in yet another game where his team was not.
2) Larose. He just missed the hat trick with the clang off the bar. With the injury-caused void at RW, he was at least 1 option to step up and provide offense at that position. For whatever reason, he has not been moved up to higher lines yet. Regardless of linemates, it is great to see another contribution from 1 of the bottom 6 forwards.
Then it gets complicated.
After a decent start and 2 quick goals, this game got uglier and uglier as it went on. The Canes gave up 8 powerplays. Were again unable to completely shut the door on a win in convincing fashion. And the team spent huge portions of the 2nd and 3rd period looking like 1 of those 7-year-old kids versus dad fun scrimmages at the end of practice wildly chasing the puck, trying like mad at times but looking disjointed and at times silly in the process.
My fear is that the lineup chaos has finally resulted in full on-ice chaos. With guys like Cullen playing some out of position, guys like Ruutu in and out of the lineup and Coach Laviolette juggling lines constantly to try to find something that works, I fear that the lack of stability of playing with some of the same guys finally showed up glaringly. With the defense also starting the revolving door with Melichar, Babchuk and Kaberle in and out with injuries and coaches decisions and Pitkanen down for the half the game, the Canes game in terms of positioning and cohesion seemed to implode in this game. The fact that the team was shorthanded so much was part of it, but there was also quite a bit of running around at even strength.
The other very interesting sidebar is the leadup to this game and what ensued. Word is that the Canes got a verbal lashing and an unpleasant practice following the Pens game. The team did come out of the gate okay and managed 2 early goals. And there were sporadic signs of intensity. But in the end, I just cannot get past the fact that the team gave up 43 shots on goal in the last 2 periods alone to an Islanders team that is not the cream of the NHL crop right now.
I am curious and anxious to see where this game leads in a few respects:
1) Ward. Is Leighton going to push him to be great? I continue to say that the better Leighton plays this year, the better Ward plays. The key for Ward is to be able to generate the same hunger and intensity when it is just a ho-hum Tuesday night road game not a game following a stretch on the bench. Maybe this is a beginning?
2) What does Coach Laviolette do with this one? Despite winning, the team seemed to implode defensively as the game wore on. Does some kind of line stability with more defined roles (checking line, etc.) help hold things together until the team gets a couple more healthy bodies? Or otherwise, what changes help shore up the defense and help the team find 60 minutes of more consistent hockey?
3) If things do go South, is this the game we look back on as a starting point. First, I am a Laviolette supporter. I thought the rumbling last spring about his job was nuts especially given GM Jim Rutherford's track record as being incredibly patient with coaches. But the team is 2 seasons with no playoffs with teams built with veterans and an aim to win now. So the half-full optimist in me can see today's game as 1 where team battled and did what it took to pull out 2 points on a less than ideal night. Or I can ask what it means when a team that got more or less bag skated yesterday managed to give up 60 shots on goal to a mediocre team.
For me, Saturday's game has the half-full wrestling wildly with the half-empty. The Canes won tonight. They are now 4-2-1. They are a solid 2-1-1 on the road trip. All of that is exactly on the track that they want to be on. But inability to put forward a full 60-minute effort on any kind of regular basis is puzzling and troubling to me. And winning via using every bit of stick tape in the locker room to hold things together just seems like a recipe unlikely to hold through 82 games. Maybe a couple healthy bodies help. The heavy November home schedule looks good. But...
Is it half full? Or half empty?
Go Canes!
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