The Hurricanes have all the tools in the shed to pull off an upset of the Penguins.
As I write this, the Carolina Hurricanes are down by a game in their Eastern Conference Final playoff series with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The odds say the team that wins the first game in a playoff series advances about 70 percent of the time. The conspiracy theorists say that (fill in the blank here with officiating, NHL hockey operations or the league itself) is working to assure the Penguins get there.
The hockey pundits say that the Pens have Sidney Crosby playing like he's on a mission from God and that that, coupled with Pittsburgh's experience, depth and more-talented role players will provide all that Pens fans need to see their team get back to a the Final and likely against last spring's protagonist, the Detroit Red Wings.
But like James Taylor, in my mind I keep going back to Carolina and not just because Paul Maurice is baiting the officials in ways not seen since Scott Bowman was behind a bench (more on that farther down).
Now I didn't like the 'Canes against the New Jersey Devils and I was proven wrong and I didn't think they could beat the Eastern Conference champion Bruins and I was wrong again (hey, I had company and picking playoff winners is a monkey's game anyway, but wrong is wrong).
And when you match them up against last spring's Stanley Cup finalist you have to be asking, "what are you thinking?" but read me out on this one.
For one thing, Carolina wins playoff series. I'm not sure how they do it but I think having 10 players on the roster who also have their name on the Stanley Cup has something to do with it. The 'Canes have a maddening tendency to be Cup contenders one season and playoff also-rans the next, but when they do get there they tend to win. Going into this playoff season they've won six straight and nine out of 10. That puts them on equal footing to the Penguins -- arguably a little bit better.
Perhaps more importantly, Carolina wins after losing. The 'Canes lost the first game in the New Jersey series and came back to win it all in seven. They did exactly the same vs. Boston.
They have excellent goaltending in the form of Cam Ward. Few people mention Ward in the same breath with Martin Brodeur and Tim Thomas, but he beat them both this spring and last I looked he was still standing when Miikka Kiprusoff and Jonas Hiller went home and Roberto Luongo was wiping tears from his eyes.
Even with the Game 1 loss to the Penguins, Ward has the best save percentage (.926) of any goalie still alive in the playoffs and leads Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury by a wide margin. Though it's not a stat likely to hold up forever, Ward has never lost a playoff series and though Fleury gets far more publicity, it is Ward who has his name on a Cup and Ward who has his name on a Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the playoffs. Both honours date back to 2006, but he was a rookie then after the wins vs. New Jersey and Boston it's hard to argue that he's not playing at an even higher level today.
My friend, writing colleague and longtime amateur goaltender Stu Hackel pointed out recently in the New York Times that Ward's mental temperment is strong but where he really excels is in his technical expertise. He makes few mistakes positioning himself, he stays square to shooters, he doesn't drift off his angles and he keeps his body erect when he drops into the butterfly making him big in goal. Hackel says Ward has also improved his lateral movement and his rebound control and that he's matured to the point that (pay attention to this Carey Price) that he doesn't get flustered.
Along with goaltending, the 'Canes have excellent penalty killing, posting the best penalty-killing numbers among teams left in play. They were at 90 percent coming into this series, a great number but a necessary one given their power play is weak.
Those are mostly all good things for a playoff team, especially a playoff team that doesn't have an overwhelmingly good defence. It's not that the 'Canes have a bad defence, far from it. Its best and most noticeable talent though is that it works so well with Ward. Credit coach Paul Maurice for that. The 'Canes were a rag-tag bunch earlier this season but under the former Leafs coach (and a former 'Canes coach before he joined the Leafs) the defence is an extension of the goaltender. The Canes' defence clears rebounds well and moves the puck smartly out of its own end. The Hurricanes rearguard aren't punishing in that end and aren't an overwhelming offensive force at the other team's blue line but it limits chances, gets the puck up to some fairly good skating forwards and if you look back at the wins vs. the Devils and the Bruins, the defenceman got the job done as a unit, not as a collection of individual talent.
True; the unit has yet to figure out how to deny Sidney Crosby the area close in to the Carolina net but then one could say the same about Washington and most any other team the Penguins play against.
The 'Canes are excellent on the forecheck and when they do that with some intensity (something that didn't happen until the third period of Game 1 with the Pens, they can be awesome. The problem Carolina has, and it was noticeable vs. Pittsburgh in Game 1, is they don't have enough shutdown players, especially at the centre ice position where the Pens are deepest. They don't have the same bevy of offensive weapons, but they do have a stunningly good faceoff man with loads of playoff experience in Rod Brind-Amour, a deadly sniper in Eric Staal and enough of a supporting cast to hack and bang at the puck for the odd goal that comes from creating chaos in front of the net.
This brings us back to Maurice and why Maurice was so calculating in his remarks after Game 1. Carefully choosing his words to suggest that the game officials didn't allow his forwards to drive the net on Fleury he upped the ante during the second off day, claiming the refs didn't allow "near the physicality as the last two series" and that : "That last one [against Boston] especially, it was an agreed-upon mugging up and down the ice. The puck carrier was going to get hit as hard as they could, and the guys driving the net got blocked out early, and you had to fight, fight, fight."
In Game 1 against Pittsburgh, he suggested, the rule was: "You can hit, but you're not allowed to, as they say in NASCAR country, there's no rubbin' allowed. So we just have to make the adjustment, and that's the way it goes.
"Every series has its own life and its own temperature, and we have to learn to be careful with contact, and if you're going to drive the net, you're not allowed to bump, which is fine as long as it goes both ways."
Ah the old "both ways" a clear call to the refs that it hasn't been a two-way street and that the Pens are being favoured. Conspiracy theorists love it, oddly enough, game officials have been known to change their ways as well.
Maurice wants to have his non-Staal players, Chad LaRose and Eric Cole (assuming he's healthy enough to play, to be able to both drive the net and harass some of Pittsburgh's finesse players like Miro Satan and Evgeni Malkin. He also wants to be able to have his role players push (and we mean that literally) the Pittsburgh defensemen. If that means pushing them right into Fleury, well, so be it, the better to push the puck over the goal line via the newest goalscoring tactic, dumping the defenseman into the goalie and creating the necessary chaos to get the puck over the line even if it means pushing everyone into the net along with it.
It's a hockey play, a variation of the way Detroit's Tomas Holmstrom toys with the goalies at the edge of the crease and Maurice knows if he can influence the officials or even the hockey operations department to allow his team the physical play necessary to do that he can win. Don't think it can happen? Well then how was it that after a great deal of noise in the media last spring the Detroit-Pittsburgh Final opened with a series of calls against Detroit's rugged forward, calls that clearly indicated that whatever the rules were before hand, they were changing in the Final.
It remains to be seen if Maurice wins that subtle fight, but if he does his 'Canes have not just a chance, but an advantage.
And if he doesn't, well, the 'Canes are still a pretty good hockey team and they do win against teams most people think are better than they are. They need to have breaks go their way sometimes but they are good at making those breaks and that gives them more chances than people think they are capable of creating.
They may not win this one but no one should be surprised if they do. Being a goal behind or even a game behind doesn't deter them. New Jersey and Boston are proof positive of that.
