The Hurricanes are one of the last three NHL teams that will be playing their season opener today. They will be hosting the Minnesota Wild (0-1-0) and have had plenty of time this week to prepare. The Hurricanes have a bit of luck with their schedule because it starts slowly with only three games in the first ten days of the NHL season.

Some may think the time off is a bad thing, however, with this young of a team, I think having tons of early practice time could be critical to helping them implement/tweak systems and compete better earlier. Last year, Coach Peters was an assistant coach for Canada at the World Cup of Hockey which was a commitment for most of September. Add this to the fact that the Hurricanes also went on a grueling six-game road-trip over 12 days and one can see practice time was limited.

While the Wild lost 4-2 on Thursday in Detroit, they didn’t appear to have an issue with chemistry with all the new faces. They outshot Detroit 39-31, however, lost the special team battle and that appeared to cost them the game. The Wild’s PK allowed two goals on four chances, and the PP went 0-4 including time on a 5v3 for around one and a half minutes. This could be an area of the game tonight that the Hurricanes can get an edge in too.

The advantage in net would typically go to the Wild, however, Stalock will be starting instead of Dubnyk tonight. This is a relatively important swing as most put Dubnyk easily as a top ten NHL netminder. This could be an early chance to get the offense rolling and some excitement going. I’d like to see the Hurricanes try to get the puck to the net as much as possible early too.

Given the amount of talent the Wild have on their roster, I think the match-ups will be key. Coach Peters does well at home and tends to be very good at getting favorable match-ups too.

The lines for tonight are:

Aho-Staal-Lindholm
Teravainen-Rask-Williams
Skinner-Ryan-Kuokkanen
Nordstrom-Kruger-McGinn

Slavin-Faulk
Hanifin-Pesce
Fleury-van Riemsdyk

Looking at the Hurricanes line-up tonight, I have a few thoughts:

- The D is what most people expected for a while. I am excited to see what the new third D pair looks like – both TVR and Fleury are newcomers. I imagine the Wild will try to test them.
- Skinner and Rask are officially separated. We saw this in preseason games, so again, this isn’t too shocking beyond the fact of how long they played together.
- Ryan appears to have the speed to help complement Skinner. I’m skeptical on Koukkanen on the right but think he won’t hold them back.
- It is a little surprising the Necas is a scratch tonight. There had been some talk that he was going to be in the line-up tonight. I imagine he will be in the next game.
- The fourth line should be very strong. They should bring good energy to the game. I’d be surprised if they were a D liability.
- TT had very good shot suppression statistics. Adding him with Williams could be a nice duo. Rask on the line will probably help draw some pressure off Williams offensively.

It should be a tight battle tonight. Puck drop is at 7:00 and on FSCR and FSNO.

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