The voice of the Carolina Hurricanes on their 3-1-0 starts thus far

Can I hear my favorite soundbite from last night?

We do that because it actually made me hungry. And now Marty Neches. Here comes the Energizer Bunny that Chip was talking about. He'll take it from Bunny with speed. He'll wrap the net, and he scores! Oh, what a tasty wrap by Marty Neches, and it's 5-3.

So Costco has these like Asian chicken wraps, and they're delicious, and that's what I was thinking of when Mike Maniscalco, the voice of your Carolina Hurricanes, laid that one on us yesterday. How are you, Mr. Maniscalco? I am well, Adam. Thank you very much.

Appreciate that. And yeah, now I'm hungry. See? I'm telling you.

We'll see what happens. I mean, you mentioned Costco, let's face it. For the buck, you can't get any better than a Costco lunch.

No. I actually just discovered it not that long ago. I didn't realize the hot dog and the drink was $2.50. Oh, it's a glorious deal, my friend. And again, I have to admit, on the Marty Neches call, I've seen him do it. And if we can say, you know, if there's a move or a goatee for him, that's it. So when I saw him with speed, I'm like, he's going to try to go around the net.

I had no idea that the words tasty wrap was going to come out of my mouth until they did. But that's a big goal. You know, he's now got two and two. So this team has discovered their identity. And oddly enough, I think it would have gotten back to their identity. Oddly enough, it came in that loss in Anaheim. See, that's exactly what I said yesterday going into the game that you hope that the last two periods carry over to San Jose. Now we have to allow San Jose might end up finishing last in the West, right? But that doesn't mean that you don't play the right way. And that's what I think happened three periods.

I mean, one would seem to be better than the other. And the power play looked good last night. I thought the power play was starting to look good. I know they scored two goals in the third period, but I thought even leading up to that, it was starting to show signs of some continuity. And obviously the power play goals in Anaheim helped.

They carried over. They actually scored in three straight power plays dating back to the game on Sunday. But I want to ask you about Seth Jarvis, because the development of him as a 200-foot player, because Rod talked about it after the game. The faceoffs he won, defensive zone faceoffs on the penalty kill when Jordan stalls in the box. I mean, that's almost more important than the two power play goals he scored. With SOTIC-2 for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, you could show off your skin again.

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Call 1-888-SOTYKTU to learn more. Yeah, I think it is. And with this team, if you watch, it starts with how they play in their own end first, Adam. And then it's get possession of the puck, and then hang on to it, and then create offense. And where Rod Brind'Amour has given this team their offensive license to do what they want to do to create. Now, they want to put pucks on net.

They want to get in front of the goaltender. But his thing all starts with, you have to be good in your end first for me to trust you with those minutes and those big minutes later on in your career. Well, Seth Jarvis is on the accelerated path for that.

And you can just watch. And you're at practices. We're at practices. He's the last one off the ice 99% of the time, always working on things, always striving to get a little bit better. But I think one of the big things in his game this year that's changed, that's helped him compete in the defensive end.

Everybody thinks getting bigger is what equates to being stronger. Well, he leaned out. He lost about eight or nine pounds.

But he is now much more trim, much more fit. So he's able to take some of these hits and they might not have had the impact on him in the game the way that it goes, but he is just a player with this high IQ. He sees the game. He wants to get better in all of those areas. And you see him working on the face-offs and, and you know, one of the things that the Kings have done, and it's not by accident is how many players have they drafted and they're a center when they draft them, but then they play the wing. So you have that flexibility. You have that ability to move these guys around.

So it was unfortunate. Sebastian Aho couldn't go last night with his upper body concern, but table Tara Vindman slides into the middle. Seth Jarvis, as you point out, is winning face-offs. You know, this is a team where you have to be a complete player if you're going to play for Rod Brenda Moore in the hurricanes. And yes, it is the San Jose sharks, but they showed last night that they have guys who, if somebody's out, it doesn't matter. It's about the guys who are on the ice. In the last two years, the hurricanes are undefeated without Sebastian Aho on the ice. So maybe it was fortunate that Sebastian Aho missed the game. Obviously I'm kidding, but it is remarkable that without Aho and without Slavin during the regular season, they have not lost. And that is, I mean, that's the thing about it. Think about making that claim in people.

If you, if you said that, yeah. Oh, the team's fine without them. They're not like you said, and I'm not, I'm not trying to make that claim either, but they don't worry if they're not there. Because again, the other part of it too, is the organization has never been this deep as far as players who they can move over to roles that you, you're not putting somebody out of place or somebody who can't play up in the lineup if somebody is out. So that's the big key for this hurricanes team right now. It's their depth. They don't rely on one guy or one line. And it's the fact that when an opportunity is open, I mean, goodness, how many times have we seen somebody bust through the door and take a playing spot because the opportunity was there for them?

Look, it happened in training camp last year. We realized, oh, Steph Nason is a legit NHL player. He scored a big power play goal last night. To me, that was the moment in the game where Carolina relaxed because it did look like we were going for one of those. How can, how do we only have two goals type of a thing with the quality of shots they were putting on Mackenzie Blackwood, who robbed Jordan Martinook in the first period, Michael Bunting in the second period, Jacob Slavin in the third period. We thought like we're targeted for like a 4-2 loss with an empty net goal tacked on because this guy's standing on his head. But the Nason goal, I think, relaxed everybody. And the passing on that goal was just spectacular.

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny you say that because Mackenzie Blackwood in his previous start made 51 saves against the Avalanche to get a point for San Jose and it looked like he was on that heater and he wasn't going to come off of it against the canes. And we've seen that before, you know, Craig Anderson in Florida a few years back and you're thinking, oh boy, you know, it's you're coming off of a game where you didn't get the result you wanted in Anaheim.

Is that one going to stick with you here? But you're right. The Nason goal was the biggest goal of the game because the team just exhaled from there and said, okay, let's just keep doing this. And then the power play.

Certainly it helped that. I think that's the other place where when you say that they're comfortable, I think they're comfortable on the man advantage right now. Remember, that was a big question. Was the team going to score power play goals? I don't care if it's against Anaheim and San Jose. You've got to score power play goals when you get the chance to do it. The team has done that in spades the last two games. The two power plays in the third period that they scored on consecutively were without Tony D'Angelo. He was he did not play again after the 10-minute misconduct. And look, I am team Tony.

I love everything about Tony D'Angelo. I'm not sure they're not better with Jalen Chatfield playing with Dimitri Orlov right now as opposed to Tony because in a way this I'm going to flipping the script here. Chatfield can be to Orlov what Slavin has been to Burns in terms of you go do your thing and I will cover for you.

And that's what I think Chatfield can give them. But I mean, I ain't going to criticize the head coach if he goes against me, but I love Chatfield last night. No, he was he was great. He was given his opportunity to play and and I agree with you. In fact, I even said that to to trip Tracy after the game that that is what Jalen Chatfield does. He allows Dimitri Orlov to be a more offensive of a player. But you know, when you look at what Tony D'Angelo has done, he's gotten points in the first three games.

You know, he he was a point per game player, so he's producing. That's what they brought him here to do. We can we can argue the merits of the penalties against him. The thing that bothered me the most, the referee gets in his way, right? And you either have to give you either have to and this might be the old baseball thing. You know, Adam went up knows you know, knows he missed the third strike call. You give the hitter a little bit more leash to say what he wants to say. You give Tony a little bit more of a breath to get through and make one more comment. But my thing is, if you give him the two minutes, fine. All right. You give me unsportsmanlike conduct. You don't give him the 10. You skate away as the referee. The period's over.

So that to me was the compounding interest on that. But and again, I think it just points to what we were just talking about with the depth of this piece. I don't think there's a wrong decision with what the canes want to do defensively. If they want to keep Tony in the lineup for the power play, they can do that. If you feel that they're a better unit of just going with three pairings and they feel if Jalen Chatfield allows that or allows Dimitri Orlov to be more of the player that the canes expecting to be.

There's no wrong answer right now. And I think that, you know, the tough part is managing minutes when you're head coach, when you have a team where you have more players than spots available for them to play. So this is going to come up during the course of the year. We'll also see if Sebastian Aho, there's going to be a practice coming up in about an hour and a half here in Seattle. We'll see what his availability will be for tomorrow night against the Kraken.

But again, these things always find a way of sorting themselves out. Look, if Sebastian doesn't play, it's just a guaranteed win night for the Carolina Hurricanes. Mike Maniscalco, I'll be I will be surrounding you and trip tomorrow on the simulcast. I appreciate your time as always, sir. Oh, thank you very much, Adam. And it's a lovely day here in the Pacific Northwest.

That sounded so sarcastic. I only assume it's raining. Thank you, man. Go go catch a fish.

No, it's actually the five minutes of sun before the rain. Very nice. All right, man. I'll talk to you later. Thanks. You got it, Adam. Thanks.

Mike Maniscalco here from Seattle. I didn't that sound sarcastic? It did a little bit.

Yeah, it did. But that's fine. It's fine. I mean, we're not we're not in midseason form yet, apparently.

I miss read that he gave me a drop pass and I skated the other way. You know, it's typically it's typically gross out there, so it's not strange. It's just kind of overcast and rainy. But that doesn't make it gross. Well, I mean, there's something months after there's something I think soothing and beautiful about like a like a soft spring rain. It is maybe day one. But if you have to do it like multiple days in a row, then that's when you're like, OK, I'm over this. I can definitely feel that.