RALEIGH, N.C. – The Carolina Hurricanes have not played a playoff game since 2009. In that span, the Canadiens have played 66 playoff games.
But neither team has won a Stanley Cup since then. Certainly not the Hurricanes, but not the Canadiens, either.
These two franchises are different, but in many ways the same. That is but one example.
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These two franchises met in a vitally important game here Sunday night, one the Hurricanes won in overtime, allowing both teams to solidify their playoff position. It’s just that one of them solidified it a lot more than the other.
But as different as these franchises are, both needed this game to respond to the unique pressure points that exist in their respective markets. And it is those pressure points that make these two teams so different but unite them all at once.
A night prior to the Hurricanes beating the Canadiens at home, both teams were playing home games against opponents that had no bearing on their current playoff positions aside from the fact they represented two points in the standings.
As the Canadiens were putting the finishing touches on their 7-4 win over the Buffalo Sabres about 1,400 kilometres to the north in Montreal, the Hurricanes were celebrating their 5-1 dismantling of the Minnesota Wild in Raleigh, putting a serious wrench in the Wild’s playoff aspirations. The Hurricanes’ room was jubilant, and what the Canadiens did or didn’t do in Montreal was largely irrelevant. At least at the time.
As the Hurricanes took control of the game against the Wild in the third period Saturday, the crowd of 16,000-plus began to chant “We want playoffs” over and over again. It was the first time this happened at PNC Arena this season. Expectations have changed for the first time in nearly a decade, and that only happens when you play well enough to warrant those expectations. It’s a good feeling, because when the Hurricanes don’t play well, having a building full enough for a chant like that to have any resonance simply doesn’t happen.
This is the reality for the Hurricanes. This is a reality they are attempting to change.
“It kind of sends chills through me because it’s been a long time since we’ve had playoff hockey here,” general manager Don Waddell said in the Hurricanes’ dressing room following their win against the Wild. “These guys have done a tremendous job every night; since Jan. 1 we haven’t lost back-to-back games (in regulation). Every time we seem to get a loss, we have a bounce-back. That’s a strong sentiment in this locker room here. We have a great locker room, great culture, led by Rod who’s done a great job coaching. … There’s a lot of excitement here. We’ve been on a long homestand, we had a lot of tickets to sell because we have a small season-ticket base, and people have responded. It’s been great to watch.”
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“Rod” is Hurricanes coach Rob Brind’Amour, a rookie head coach and a franchise legend, the captain who was the first one to raise the only Stanley Cup in Hurricanes history. He knows what the playoffs would mean in this market because few people understand this market better.
“I should enjoy it more,” he said after the win against the Wild. “I try to make myself stop and enjoy this. But it’s pretty stressful, for sure.”
Pressure points.
“You are like my kids sometimes. I know you can do better”
Check out what coach said to the squad after that OT win pic.twitter.com/WZZwM5CWw7
— Carolina Hurricanes (@NHLCanes) March 25, 2019
The Hurricanes have a new owner, Tom Dundon, who has vowed to do things differently in order for his shiny new toy to have success, and who sees a full building and thus sees the signs of that success on the horizon. The playoffs are everyone’s goal, but some teams need the playoffs more than others.
The Hurricanes are one of those teams.
This is kind of fun!
— Tom Dundon (@TDCanes) March 25, 2019
The Canadiens don’t know what it’s like to have a small season-ticket base. Though it’s been easier than in years past to get tickets to games at the Bell Centre, they rarely have “a lot of tickets to sell” even at the worst of times. But there were empty seats at the Bell Centre last season and, most concerning of all if you’re the Canadiens, people seemed to be losing faith in the organization. Making the playoffs this season would go a long way in restoring that faith, a job that is already underway with the entertaining brand of hockey the Canadiens have played this season. Going to the Bell Centre, much like going to PNC Arena, is fun again.
Canadiens owner Geoff Molson was at the game in Raleigh. He doesn’t attend most road games. If you want an idea of how important this game was to the Canadiens, this would be a good place to start.
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Pressure points.
To Molson, making the playoffs this season after sticking with general manager Marc Bergevin amid a firestorm calling for his head would prove his patience was justified. It would show that Bergevin’s latest plan is on the right track. That a reset was a better path than a rebuild.
The Canadiens arrived in Raleigh late Saturday night knowing that a win in regulation would bring them to within a point of the Hurricanes and the first wild-card spot, the spot that allows them to avoid the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, but more importantly would distance them from the Columbus Blue Jackets below them.
It was Montreal’s fourth game in six nights and third in four nights, playing a team that has been one of the best in the NHL since Jan. 1, and the Canadiens came away with a point. It was a valuable point and allowed them to finish their week with seven out of eight points in four games, solidifying their playoff chances after they were left for dead.
“There are no moral victories,” Brendan Gallagher said. “We had a lead obviously going into the third. It would have been nice to find a way to win this one.”
The Canadiens had a 1-0 lead going into the third period, a lead Carey Price gave them because he played what might have been his best game of the season, and that’s saying something. The Hurricanes, as they have a tendency to do, spent basically the entire first period in the Canadiens’ zone and got nothing for their trouble because every shot they sent toward Price was swallowed whole, with no rebounds, no second opportunities, nothing particularly dangerous happening as a result.
The Canadiens flipped the switch and dominated the second period – the Hurricanes got their first shot on goal with 5:26 left in the period – but sat back and allowed Carolina to attack in waves in the third. That 1-0 lead evaporating appeared inevitable, and eventually it did when Trevor van Riemsdyk’s shot from the point deflected off Jordie Benn’s knee and past Price.
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That week with seven out of eight points? It would have been better with eight out of eight points.
“I thought we definitely played well,” Price said when asked if the Canadiens’ week could build their confidence. “But we need points more than confidence right now.”
Price was angry. Gallagher was angry. This was not necessarily a bad result; it was a point in a hostile building at a crucial time of year on the tail end of a tough stretch of the schedule. But that anger said a lot about this team and what the players expect of themselves.
“I think it’s totally natural that we’re disappointed because we came here to win,” coach Claude Julien said. “You want to win a hockey game, and I think at the end of the day we gave a real good effort. But we just finished four in six, this was our third in four nights, I think the fatigue factor caught up. I started seeing it midway through the second period, we stopped making plays, we started getting rid of pucks and then we were just hanging on in the third period. But when you pick up seven points out of eight, it’s a good week. If we do that next week, we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
A few days earlier, the Hurricanes were talking about a 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning – a team no one seems to beat – in much the same way the Canadiens were talking about this loss to them. They were disappointed even though it was entirely reasonable to expect a loss.
“You play the best in the league by a mile and everybody was – I don’t know the right word to say, I’ve got to watch what I say – everyone was upset about how the game went,” Brind’Amour said Saturday of that loss to the Lightning. “And that’s great, around here. We expect to win every night and we also expect a certain level of play. When that’s not there, everyone wasn’t too happy.”
These two teams, sitting on opposite ends of the NHL’s revenue and business spectrum, are trying to build something. They are doing it by playing similar styles, possessing the puck and forechecking like hell to wear down teams and force mistakes. They are doing it to serve their fans, whether they are always in the building or looking for an excuse to jump back on board. They are doing it with a common goal in mind.
The Hurricanes and Canadiens couldn’t be more different. But they are the same.
This game showed it.
(Photo: Gregg Forwerck / Getty Images)
Arpon Basu has been the editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montréal since 2017. Previously, he worked for the NHL for six years as managing editor of LNH.com and a contributing writer on NHL.com. Follow Arpon on Twitter @ArponBasu
