Carolina Hurricanes vs. Columbus Blue Jackets: Game Night Hub and Discussion

Only two games into the season, and an injury has already forced Bill Peters’ hand into changing the Hurricanes lineup that beat the Minnesota Wild on Saturday. Trevor van Riemsdyk looked to have suffered a lower-body injury of some sort crashing into the boards in the third period, but Peters announced today that a concussion has TVR in the recovery protocol and will rule him out of tonight’s matchup with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

That means that Klas Dahlbeck will earn his first game action of the new season tonight, teaming up with Haydn Fleury on the third pairing. Aside from that necessitated change, Peters is leaving well enough alone, making no changes to the forward lines from what they looked like to start Saturday (although they were tinkered with during the game). On defense, the Canes will make permanent the change that was made in the first intermission, starting the game with the familiar Slavin/Pesce and Hanifin/Faulk pairings.

Here’s what Peters had to say after the skate this morning. And here’s how the Canes will look:

Sebastian Aho - Jordan Staal - Elias Lindholm
Teuvo Teravainen - Victor Rask - Justin Williams
Jeff Skinner - Derek Ryan - Janne Kuokkanen
Joakim Nordstrom - Marcus Kruger - Brock McGinn

Jaccob Slavin - Brett Pesce
Noah Hanifin - Justin Faulk
Haydn Fleury - Klas Dahlbeck

Scott Darling
Cam Ward

Scratches: Lee Stempniak (IR lower body), Trevor van Riemsdyk (concussion), Josh Jooris (healthy), Martin Necas (healthy)

The Blue Jackets, as has become their practice under John Tortorella, did not take a morning skate. Following a 5-1 trouncing by the Blackhawks on Saturday, Tortorella unsurprisingly is making changes tonight, most noticeably at forward where Josh Anderson will make his season debut. Anderson held out for all of training camp but finally signed a new contract just before the season.

We have no idea who will start in goal, because you’re more likely to get gold out of Fort Knox than you are to get a starting goalie from Tortorella, but after Joonas Korpisalo was lit up against Chicago it seems probable that Sergei Bobrovsky will get the call tonight.

Here’s how the Jackets should look:

Pierre-Luc Dubois - Alexander Wennberg - Oliver Bjorkstrand
Artemi Panarin - Nick Foligno - Cam Atkinson
Matt Calvert - Brandon Dubinsky - Josh Anderson
Sonny Milano - Lukas Sedlak - Markus Hannikainen

Zach Werenski - Seth Jones
Jack Johnson - David Savard
Ryan Murray - Gabriel Karlsson

Sergei Bobrovsky
Joonas Korpisalo

Scratches: Jordan Schroeder (IR upper body), Scott Harrington (healthy), Zac Dalpe (healthy)