The man who called the great Canes OT win

To PNC Arena, not just yesterday, but also on Friday.

And to talk about what happened Friday, I want to go back to what happened Wednesday of last week. Wednesday, Carolina's at Dallas. At that point, and I think right now still, the best team in the Western Conference. Second time they played Dallas this year. First one was sort of a weird game, bad goaltending, I thought both sides. And in Raleigh, Martine Neches wins it in overtime. And then we get to Wednesday in Dallas, Martine Neches wins it in overtime, beating the Dallas Stars, right? And then Friday, Carolina out of nowhere ends up forcing overtime. And then I want you to hear this because somebody, Mike Stradamus, I guess, has the call in overtime. That was a brilliant play-by-play call for the game-winner Mike Maniscalco joins us on the Adam Gold Show. When Neches came on the ice, you know this because I'm in the booth next to you, and when the game is getting ready to end, I put the headphones on and I'm monitoring the broadcast too. So when Neches came on the ice, I noticed it, and you noticed it, and everybody else noticed it.

Here comes the guy who's going to score the game-winning goal. So I just wanted to give you your flowers for that, sir. I don't know if I deserve flowers if everybody even on planet earth knows that that guy's out there. It is proclivity for ending games in overtime, but I will certainly take them, Adam. Thank you very much.

You deserve the flowers for that. It is kind of weird. The Hurricanes have six overtime wins. He's got three of the goals. No other forwards have goals.

The other three are all from the defense. He's been, I want to talk about other players, but Neches has been the guy that we've been looking for the last couple of years. Yeah, I think a big part of it too, Adam, and you know this, whenever a player's in a contract year, they'll never say during the year that it weighs on them or it's part of their mind. I think last year it was on Marty Neches' mind that he was pressing to try to get a big deal, the deal that he wants, and it didn't go the way he wanted to. But if you listen to what Rod Brind'Amour has said, and then we're around Jeff Daniels and you're around the team, the talent has always been there. The talent has never been in question for Marty Neches.

I think it's the confidence of just regularly going out and doing those things. And the one thing that he's doing this year that he hadn't done before in his career, he's going to those areas that you have to get to to score goals in this league. He's going to the front of the net. He, for the most part of his early career perimeter player, all the speed in the world. I mean, if you watch him just flat out skate, maybe Connor McDavid is faster than him. And I say maybe, but he didn't use that speed to back off the defense and then take it to the net. Well, he's using that speed now to back off the defense and take the puck to the net. And I think that's why we're seeing this 21 goal season out of him, career high in goals. It's going to be a career high in everything by the time it's done. And I think that just having the confidence and the knowledge of, if I do A, B is going to happen and he's not thinking about it anymore.

He's just going out and doing it. Mike Maniscalco, voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, second best record in the NHL behind Boston. But I, as we, as I was starting the segment, I was reading the ace AP top 25. Actually, I didn't even care who number one is. It's Purdue. But if we had an end, if we had a top 25, like college hoops style, Carolina would be number one, right?

They, they're one, oh and one against Boston, Mike. I, I would, I mean, I have a bias for that. And as you know, all of these polls always have bias.

Sure. He knows what they're voting on. Boston's entire body of work has been impressive. I mean, there's, there's no other way to look at it, but if, if the canes, if there were, what is it?

53 people who vote on it. If the canes got, if the canes got 23 votes, I think they're deserving of it because it is funny how you can make stats look any way that you want. We did this on the broadcast last night, since November 26th, the Carolina hurricanes have a better record than the Boston Bruins.

They just do. Um, so, uh, there is that, uh, there was a thought in my mind last night when I was ending the broadcast, did the canes, you know, the canes just beat the best team in the NHL or did the best team in the NHL just beat the Bruins. But you know, you don't want to go too far with certain things when you're talking about it, but you, you can make the case with how the, the hurricanes have played all year long, that it's them in Boston and it's nobody else. If we're talking about who are the best teams in the league this year.

So there's a case to be made. I think what the Bruins have done has just been silly, uh, from, from the get-go to only have seven losses, but then you compare that the canes only have nine, the canes have single digit losses. And there are two games away from the all-star break. If they get to the all-star break with just nine losses, it's, it's just an unbelievable accomplishment.

Yeah. And, uh, coming the next two games coming up, the LA Kings are very good. Then a quick turnaround, a trip up to Buffalo on Wednesday. Uh, so if they were to win, uh, or at least drag each game into overtime, uh, the, which the hurricanes do better than any team in the NHL with 17, you don't get bonus. You get a bonus. There's nothing, nothing extra for bonus play, but by the way, I know, I know people, I know people get mad at me when I say the canes only have nine losses, but a magic point falls from the sky when we go to order.

So as I bang my hand, that was the magic point that was the came down and it knocked my phone over. Uh, but it's one of those, it's one of those things where, uh, just, just they find a way to like, well, you said they're, they're going to find a way to drag a game to overtime. And no, sadly, I might get an extra bottle of water, but there's no other conversation. There's, there's nothing wrong with that. So last year and really all four years in the playoffs, Carolina has their offense has kind of run dry and the missing piece this year is supposed to be Matt was supposed to be max patchy ready. Is it possible that the missing piece is already here? Because I think that what we're seeing from Sebastian Aho, the last, you know, 10 games where he's got nine goals and 14 points, maybe he's the missing piece. And there's some other guys who could also be the missing piece too.

Well, to that, Adam, I would say that I think we've seen that before with Sebastian. I think he knows that he, he needs to find another level in the post season. And, you know, you go back to the year in the bubble, that playing series against the Rangers, he was phenomenal. But when you, when you continue to move on in the playoffs, that room that players get in, you need the great players to come up and continue to do what they do, but that room to make plays it all of a sudden goes away, or it's not there as we see in a regular season game in abundance.

But Sebastian Aho is one of those guys. I do think that the patch already injury is one of the most unfortunate injuries in recent sport. And not just because it happened to the Carolina Hurricanes, but he was the right fit for this team. He was brought in and the sample size was extremely small, five games, but he was a big body. You know, the way that he scored goals, you know, he, he banked two off of Andrew peak in that game. He knows, smart players, goal scorers know how to do that.

And I just kind of feel like you look at one of those things and I just might, my, my heart absolutely goes out to patch already for coming back from the Achilles injury and going from there. But there are guys on this roster who, when we get to April and may, they have to find that other gear. When you get to the second round, third round, and that's what championship teams do. Take a look at what Colorado did last year. That's what McKinnon finally did. You know what Cal McCar was able to do on the, on the blue line. That's what in, in all those years in Tampa, that's what Kucharoff does. That's what Stan coast, when he was healthy for the one year, he wasn't healthy the other, but your best players have to be the guys who you're counting on to get on the scoreboard once, twice a game, if you're going to win a Stanley cup and Sebastian was going to be a big, big part of that.

And I think this might be the year where he does kick down that door and you can count on him to be that offensive supply that they need. My favorite Sebastian Aho, by the way, is angry Sebastian Aho. And I think those games, these games, whether it was against Boston last night, I know when I took a shot in the power play and Brad Marchand had a little, a little cross check to the, to the forearms and, and Aho just gave it right back. Somehow Andrei Svechnikov got a penalty in that situation.

Nobody knows, nobody understands why all of that happens other than, oh, you're playing the Bruins. But I love angry Aho. We see angry Aho against Tampa Bay too. Something about Nikita Kucherov brings out angry Sebastian Aho. It's my favorite Aho. Oh, it's, there are a couple of players who when they do the don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

No, that's not true. Every hurricane span likes it. When Sebastian Aho and the other guy I'll put in that category is Jordan stall, angry Jordan stall is unstoppable.

He is, that is Bruce Banner into the Hulk. There is no doubt in my mind when that happens. So we just need to get a couple more Mr. McGee's on the other teams to draw that out of these guys. Look, I think we saw the, the angry, angry stall showed up on the, on the empty net goal. They dragged, hey, David Pasternak, come on for a ride. We're going the other end of the ice. It was three pony rides from Thunder Bay.

All right. Final thing for Mike Maniscalco. There's a lot, we could talk about goaltending. We could talk about where's Tevo Terravanen been, although I thought he was good last night. And I keep beating this drum because I just can't believe, nobody will be honest. There is zero people in that building that thought Jalen Chatfield would be this good.

Zero. They thought he could play, but what he's doing, that's completely different than not embarrassing yourself on a third pair. Uh, you know, I'm glad, uh, glad you brought this up because now there's a free plug for, uh, the podcast that Shane Willis and I do Cane's cast that Rod Brindemore is going to join us on. People are going to want to be a part of this, but Rod earlier in the year talked about opportunity, Adam. And I believe in sports, there are certain players who they just never get the opportunity because they, they get drafted to the wrong organization or they're playing in the wrong system. And you never know what these, these players are able to do. Uh, I'm not going to give it all away.

You need to listen to the podcast, but Rod made a good point about Jalen Chatfield of what and why this system fits him. And the point that you're making is 100% correct. Because if you would have told me that the hurricanes would be without Jacob Slavin for X amount of time, and the guy to take his minutes is Jalen Chatfield playing is offside and you wouldn't notice this. You wouldn't notice Jacob Slavin is out of the lineup.

I would have called you a fool. And, and I, you know, I still might, if that would happen again, but now I've seen Jalen Chatfield play, uh, and what he does, he can skate. He plays a simple game. He's not trying to reinvent the wheel and he's not trying to be an all star.

He makes nine out of 10 times. He's making the play up the boards out the right play. It goes to, you know, every now and again, somebody, uh, even Jacob Slavin, even Cal McCar, even Roman Yossi, you know, you're going to make a play like that, but his skating ability is off the charts. I don't think anybody knew that the canes were getting that except for the cane scouting staff and the cane scouting staff needs to be applauded for seeing something in Jalen Chatfield and saying that this is a guy who in 16 games in Vancouver, we need to sign because he might be a depth player that we could get a couple of NHL games out of. And then the opportunity presented itself at him. And he's shown that he's an NHL player for this team, for this group, he fits in perfectly. And, and it starts with the legs and, uh, the rest follows.

And, you know, he's got a little bit more offense to his game than I think any of us, uh, had anticipated. As he told us, all he needed is one and the rest will follow. And here we are. Yeah.

That is on like a, like a three game goal drought. We got to stop that. Mike.

I know exactly. I got to, got to ask him about that. Please, please do. Uh, tomorrow night against the LA Kings, I'll be in the booth next to you, Mike Maniscalco, uh, voice of the hurricanes.

Thank you very much. So Cain's cast, uh, you and Shane Willis with Rod Brind'Amour talking about Jalen Chatfield. You're going to have Jalen Chatfield as well. Uh, no, we're not going to have a chat field. We got to get it out today.

We missed last week. So we've got to get it out today as quick as we possibly can, but I'm working on Jalen Chatfield. I think I know a guy who I can get them on the show.

Yeah. If you need help, let me know. Uh, I'll see you. I'll see you on the fifth floor.