The Carolina Hurricanes are in some kind of weird funk right now. Nothing seems to be going right for them. Friday night, the Calgary Flames came into town having just played the previous night as well as 2 nights before that. The Flames are in the middle of a killer cross continent road trip. If ever you were going to get a jump on a team, it would seem that would be the perfect chance. Circumstances in the game itself seemed to give the Canes every chance to win. They had a huge advantage in powerplay opportunities 8-3. They got 2 goals from unusual sources, Chad LaRose (4) and Craig Adams (1). They out-shot and out-chanced the opposition in each period. But even with all of those advantages, they still couldn't win. The final score, Flames 4, Canes 3.
What went wrong? The defense continues to look shaky at times and made too many turnovers. Trevor Letowski and Nic Wallin both made costly turnovers which led directly to the first 2 goals for the Flames. Bret Hedican and Frank Kaberle both look injured or something else is wrong with them. In my opinion, they don't look like themselves. Cam Ward had a mediocre to bad game. Allowing 4 goals on just 21 shots isn't going to win a team many games. The top 2 forward lines couldn't get the job done. Staal, Stillman, Cole, Brind'Amour, Williams, and Whitney generated quite a few chances, but just couldn't get a much needed goal. Everyone seemed to work hard, but the end result just wasn't there. On the other side of the rink, the Calgary star players did pull through when needed. Captain Jarome Iginla had a goal as did new sensation Kristian Huselius. Dion Phaneuf had the game winner.
Speaking of Huselius, how stupid does Florida look or putting him on waivers last year? He would be the 2nd leading scorer on that team right now behind just Olli Jokinen, and they gave him away for nothing. Of course this is the same team who traded away Roberto Luongo and in essence received Bryan Allen in return. Ouch! Mike Keenan would never take responsibility for those brain dead decisions, would he?
So what do the Canes do next? One thing is for sure, they won't have much time to think about what went wrong because they had to board a plane and fly to Philadelphia right after the Calgary game. A big, bad, mean Flyers team is waiting for them, and that will be another tough test. Does John Grahame play or do they ride Cam Ward again? I think they should play Grahame. Cam looks like he needs a break and if they don't plan on playing John again, why bother to keep him? More about that later.
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Joe Walsh
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