Coyotes at Hurricanes: Lines and Rosters; Peters Tees Off on Lack; Nestrasil Reassigned to Charlotte

The Carolina Hurricanes have played as of late without much success, dropping 7 of the last 8 games. Some of those losses were to fairly good teams: the Washington Capitals, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Toronto Maple Leafs, to name a few. But some were to poor teams — especially the league-worst Colorado Avalanche.

So coming into tonight’s home match against the Arizona Coyotes, the first of two back-to-back games against the Coyotes, the Hurricanes have to prove their worth. Overall, the Arizona Coyotes may be a lost cause this season, but they’ve had a few big wins in the past month, including the Penguins and the Anaheim Ducks.

It’ll take some strong lines for the Hurricanes, the youngest team in the league in a bad funk, to pull out a win.

A few notes on the Hurricanes side:

• Jeff Skinner is taking the ice after leaving Florida with an upper-body injury earlier this week. Andrej Nestrasil was shipped back to the Charlotte Checkers (release below) after playing his first game since January against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday, but Patrick Brown is back on the ice after his first game of the season in the Wednesday loss.
• And at morning skate, Hurricanes coach Bill Peters did not mince his words about the recent play of Eddie Lack, saying that his current stats are “not good enough.”

So, uh, expect Cam Ward to start in net.

Here’s how the Hurricanes lined up for morning skate:

Phil Di Giuseppe - Jordan Staal - Teuvo Teravainen
Sebastian Aho - Victor Rask - Elias Lindholm
Jeff Skinner - Jay McClement - Lee Stempniak
Joakim Nordstrom - Derek Ryan - Patrick Brown

Jaccob Slavin - Justin Faulk
Noah Hanifin - Brett Pesce
Klas Dahlbeck - Ryan Murphy

Cam Ward
Eddie Lack

The Coyotes, trying to find a scoring push, have been changing up their lines a lot, but tonight they could line up something like this:

Christian Dvorak - Max Domi - Teemu Pulkkinen
Jamie McGinn - Tobias Rieder - Jordan Martinook
Lawson Crouse - Shane Doan - Josh Jooris
Brendan Perlini - Peter Holland - Radim Vrbata

Connor Murphy - Jakob Chychrun
Luke Schenn - Kevin Connauton
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Alex Goligoski

Louis Domingue
Mike Smith

A few notes on the Coyotes:

• Backup Louis Domingue gets the start after Mike Smith gave up 4 goals on 39 shots last night against the Buffalo Sabres.
• Alex Burmistrov is still out after a rattling hit in Boston last week.

NESTRASIL ASSIGNED TO CHARLOTTE CHECKERS
Forward skated 9:51 of ice time against Tampa Bay on Wednesday

Ron Francis, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has assigned forward Andrej Nestrasil to the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League (AHL).

Nestrasil, 26, skated 9:51 of ice time in Wednesday’s overtime loss against Tampa Bay and has scored one goal and earned four assists (5 points) with the Hurricanes this season. In 18 games with the Checkers, the Prague native has notched four goals and earned six assists (10 points). Nestrasil (6’3”, 200 lbs.) joined the Hurricanes on Nov. 20, 2014, when he was claimed on waivers from Detroit. He has scored 17 goals and earned 31 assists (48 points) in 128 career NHL games with Detroit and Carolina.