A familiar face is back with the Canes...

We are going to see a return at PNC Arena. Nino Niederreiter is back in town. We'll talk about that in just a second as we bring in the head coach, Rod Brindamore. It's the Canes and the Predators. But, before we get to hockey, pretty good win for NC State last night.

Hopefully the building's got some good juju. Yeah, they smoked them. Did you watch it? Absolutely. I was not there. I only go to hockey games. You know that.

How are things in the Brindamore household? Was everybody jumping off the wall? Yeah, kind of. I mean, the coach wasn't here, so I was surprised he wasn't at the game. But, yeah, pretty excited. That's a big win. Yeah, that is a big win. I mean, conference games are all big wins, but it was obviously super exciting to watch. Alright, let's talk about other things that are super exciting. Let's start with the return of Max Pachey. Ready?

Be still my heart. Yeah. Well, he's been chomping at the bit. He's done about his time.

Put in the time with the injury and got to get him in there. So, we'll see how it goes. I don't expect miracles or anything. I think it's going to take some time just for a lot of reasons.

You know, being out with the rust and then just the whole new system. But, you got to get him in there. So, where will he line up tonight? Who will he play with? Well, I'll probably start him.

It's a good question. I think he's going to bounce around, to be quite honest with you. So, I don't want to overdo it with him, but we'll kind of just get a gauge on how he's feeling. He may play with a combination of a lot of people. Do you try to get him with somebody that he's familiar with and Paul Stasny as they were teammates? Yeah, maybe. I mean, he'll play some shifts with him, for sure.

But, again, my lineup, I got one line I know I'm going to keep together, then the rest are kind of a little bit in flux right now. Is Stephen Nason going to play? I know he only played, what, a minute against New York. Yeah. No, he's out.

He can't go. So, everyone will also be the same lineup. All right. Piotr again? Yeah.

All right. I know there were some squirrelly goals. You said after the game he would probably like a couple of those back, and that's fair. But, he otherwise looked awfully sharp to me. He looked like all the other stuff that he normally does was pretty much on point.

Yeah, no. Listen, he was fine. There were two goals that obviously can't go in, and he knows it. But, they were also just weird ones.

It's one of those things that happens. He was out for a little while. I thought his game was good. Like you said, other than that, he looked really sharp.

Wasn't a ton of work, but I liked his game overall. We got a couple of bad bounces and a couple of bad calls that shouldn't happen. But, that happens in our game.

All right. Brad Brindamore, let me ask you real quick about those calls. Because, I kind of felt like basically every penalty that they called last night on Tuesday night on both teams, they could have not called just as easily.

That game could have been played entirely at five on five. Yep. I agree.

I've been saying this for years. I don't understand why we have to call the little knick-knack ones that are irrelevant, or even aren't even penalties. To me, like you said, we're paraphrasing a little bit. I'm just looking at our calls. But, the Brett Burns calls are not penalties. Obviously, the one at the end is not a penalty. But, that leads to their getting three goals. So, it's too much of an impact when you think about it in the game, to call stuff that just shouldn't be called.

It doesn't even have an impact on the play. I mean, that's where we're kind of, we've lost track a little bit. They've got to do something about it, but the only way to actually probably have something done is, I can't keep talking about it because I get in trouble.

I don't know. Maybe you guys are the players, the little ones playing the game. They've got to do something to kind of just change the way we do it. Not so much, it's not the officials.

It's just the way they're being mandated to do it. And, it's too hard to wrap live. It is really hard. I mean, you can't tell until you take a peek at what actually happened. And, the technology's there. It'll eventually happen. We've talked about this a lot.

We need to review these penalties quickly and decide if they're actually worth changing that outcome of the game. Nino Nederreiter is back in town. I don't know if you've had a chance to say hi yet, but that's going to be somewhat of an emotional return probably for Nino.

Yeah, I haven't. I mean, right now skating around is the morning skate, but no, I think it will be. He put in some good years here and he's good for us. We love the player. Like you said, I said the other day in New York with Benson, business is business. They've got to move on. Never be a graduate player for doing what he has to do.

He was great for us. I think we're done with the reunion tour, although Trocek has not come back to Raleigh just yet. This is a weird one for me because I don't know the answer at all. I'm curious. I think third periods have been really good in general for you guys, but you're underwater. You're minus six in the third period, plus 15 in the first, plus 12 in the second.

Is there a theory or do you have any reasoning why that may be the case? Well, no. I mean, I think we've actually played some of our best hockey. I think it's just a couple games where maybe it got out of hand like last night where we gave up three, but I don't know that it was a bad period.

It's just weird things happen. So I don't really look at that too much. You know, that's just one of those stats that you probably throw in the trash.

Absolutely. All right. I will.

I'll throw that in the trash. Well, good luck against the Predators tonight. You got to start a new streak.

We need 12 in a row next time. All right. Sounds good. Well, I wonder if we'll listen to each other. Yeah. Well, I listen to Rod to throw the third period goals for goals against stat in the trash. Yeah.

And will he start a 12 game winning streak? I like it. If I mean, we have a very good relationship. I would I'd like to think that Rob would listen to me and I would certainly listen in. It's a good trade off.

That would be that would be very I think everybody would be happy if we did that. By the way, the Devils creeped a couple of points closer to Carolina last night with a win in Detroit. The Lightning lost in Minnesota.

Gosh, they got hammered in. Oh, you did. I did because I was one of my bad. Yeah.

But you had the Devils minus two goals. Yes, right. I did. Good. You're good.

They did that for you. I also had the Stars and the Ducks and the Stars decided to be, you know, shut out. Yeah, they got shut out last night. There was a light slate in the NHL tonight. Much, much more, much busier lineup tonight in the NHL. But I'm looking forward to seeing Nina. Nina Ryder also looking forward to seeing how this this team has not lost a game in a while. The last loss of any kind. Now come against Nashville, right? Not Nashville, Anaheim. They lost in overtime out in L.A. in that six game road trip that was four games on the road. Then you came home, went to sleep, then went to the island and then came home and went to sleep and then went to Detroit. Yeah, it was weird, but the Hurricanes have obviously won a bunch of games, but now the lead is down to five.