Canes need to overcome themselves in playoff push

By Adam Gold, 99.9 FM The Fan radio host

The Carolina Hurricanes have 29 games to play. Twenty nine games to prove they’re good enough to battle it out for the Stanley Cup.

So?

The Hurricanes are in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division, a mere two points short of the cut line, with a dozen games left against the teams that want the same prize. The first of those comes Tuesday night when the Philadelphia Flyers arrive at PNC Arena one point ahead of Carolina, but also on the outside looking in at one of the five coveted postseason spots that will surely come from the Metro.

• Peters blasts Canes over 'unacceptable' effort in loss to Sharks

And?

To this point in the year, the Hurricanes have shown to be a house of cards, easily toppled at the slightest disturbance. Every time it appears they’ve taken a step forward, they seem to backslide into yet another apparent crisis of confidence. When Cam Ward shut out the Penguins on Jan. 4 in Pittsburgh, they were 19-13-8, good for fifth in the division — with games in hand on all of the teams surrounding them in the standings — and had appeared to turn a corner.

Then, two nights later, the cards fell.

Blown off the ice, thoroughly embarrassed by the Bruins in Boston, 7-1. Competitive, but second best three days later in Tampa in a 5-4 game that showed the gap between Hurricanes speed and real speed. Talk about Lightning…

We could continue listing the litany of disappointing performances and the results that came with them, but it would only delay the important conversation, not to mention rip open — and rub salt in — old wounds.

What now?

Forget about the bigger picture just for a few minutes. The Hurricanes need to win a hockey game. Actually, the need is far more basic than that. What the Hurricanes need more than anything is to perform like a confident, competent, competitive unit in a game of consequence. Something that hasn’t always been easy over the last year and a half. The truth is that they won the first two of this eight-game home stand without playing particularly well and similar efforts against better teams ended up staggering a unit already on unsteady psychological footing.

Today, with 10 games before the league’s trade deadline, the Hurricanes are a team in search of an identity. Head coach Bill Peters often refers to last year’s team, which was among the best at suppressing enemy shots and had one of the top penalty killing units in franchise history, and laments that this year’s version has yet to attain that level. But, this is a new year and a new team, even if most of the players are the same.

Maybe this team needs a different identity. I mean, we’re 53 games into this season and they haven’t played to last year’s standard more than five times, so maybe the issue is that was last year and it's no longer last year. Maybe this team needs a shake up that only a significant personnel adjustment can provide. Maybe this team needs to be scared.

To borrow and take poetic license from the great philosopher Joe Riggins, after tossing a bushel of bats into the team showers, “You lollygag through the neutral zone! You lollygag your way back on defense. You lollygag your way in and out of the corners. You know what that makes you?”

A non-playoff participant for the ninth straight season.

Could Peters send a star up to the press box to watch? While not a star, Victor Rask was a healthy extra earlier in the season. However, with every single game and every single point being of utmost importance, it’s hard to see a player of significance sitting out.

Could there be a call up from the minors? It would take some roster juggling, and a waiver period, but General Manager Ron Francis could bring in Valentin Zykov or Warren Foegele or Alexi Saarela, all of whom are scoring goals in Charlotte. And, maybe one of them would add a jolt of energy to the mix in the locker room and make some of the current inhabitants wonder if their time in Raleigh is coming to an end.

Could there be a trade? Anything is possible. But unless this team self-ignites, warranting anything substantive in the way of an acquisition, what’s the point? And, unless Francis is willing to deal a major asset — whether a player, a prospect or a high draft pick — the chances of bringing a significant goal-scoring forward are slim.

Could Peters’ job be in jeopardy? See above. For a coaching change to have any impact on this team it would likely have to come now. Remember, that while there are 29 games left, the trade deadline is at the end of the month, and the only reason to change the coach would be to make a run at the playoffs.

There isn’t a person who purports to be a hockey analyst who doesn’t think that the Hurricanes are good enough to be a playoff team. But it doesn’t matter what any of them think because the proof is on the ice, and through 53 games, this team with so much young potential just hasn’t demonstrated that it has the stomach for high-intensity moments.

Sometimes it manifests itself in the 7-1 Boston Massacre, which rendered the Steel City Shutout utterly meaningless. Sometimes it rears it’s hideous head in the final 3:08 at home against the Capitals. With the finish line in sight, and the Canes poised to complete a home and home sweep of Washington in the span of 27 hours, Carolina got sloppy, fell apart and was left holding nothing in their hands but their sticks.

If we’re being fair, in spite of the fact that the Hurricanes have won four times in the nine games since, there isn’t a player in that locker room who will say they’ve played really well since that meltdown. It would be fair to wonder if they believe they’re good enough to make the playoffs. Justin Williams came back to Carolina because he said he believed he could be a major factor in getting this team back to the postseason. But it would be fair to wonder whether he looks around him in the locker room and sees people who share that same confidence.

His immediate neighbors, Jeff Skinner to his left and the aforementioned Rask to his right have played the same number of playoff games in their careers as I have. Sure, there are players in the room with Stanley Cup and playoff experience, but only Williams and Ward have done that here. And not a single one of those past Cup champs were in a leading role in their postseason histories.

Everyone is mad. From the front office to the coaches to the fans -- especially the fans. Even the media has given to overreact, thinking we know all the answers -- I clearly don't.  The solutions seem easy enough.  Benchings, call-ups, trades and firings happen, but all are unlikely to have a significant and lasting impact on this team.  Bottom line is that we feel like we've seen this movie before and we think the ending is going to turn out the same.  But, hey, Tom Brady didn't take the Patriots down the field and win the Super Bowl Sunday night like we all expected, right? 

None of us, however, are more stymied than the men who play this game for a living. Collectively, they just might not know the way through.  

The players are frustrated with their own performance. Skinner scored seven goals in his first 10 games and has eight since. Justin Faulk averaged 16 goals a year the last three seasons and has just four with nine weeks to go. The latest goaltender brought in to make Ward the backup hasn't been able to handle the role and the Hurricanes are left relying on the soon-to-be 34 year old goalie for the heavy lifting. Ward really needed to be the backup to Scott Darling. This team would have been in far better shape had Darling been just average. Alas, statistically speaking, his performance has been among the worst in the entire league and the team’s fate is once again in Ward’s hands.

It goes beyond the crease, however. The Canes seem to wander about the ice aimlessly. Just looking at the goals the Sharks scored Sunday afternoon you could spend a long time listing off the players who did little to prevent them from happening.

On Monday, Williams repeated something he’s said many times already this year — too many times, honestly.

“You don’t know you can do it until you do it.”

Then Williams, with his name etched on the Cup three different times, nodded towards the electronic standings board in the front of the locker room and said, “we’ve got 29 games to prove we belong.”

Prove to whom?