Canes vs Bruins tonight and then Devils tomorrow

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ChumbaCasino.com. Cane's Bruins for the first of three times this year. They will go at it tonight. It is a nationally televised game. But you can still hear Mike Meniscalco and the one and only Trip Tracy who joins us on the Adam Gold Show if you listen to the radio.

And then you also get me in between periods. And who knows, maybe even a little cross conversation that has been known to happen. Trip Tracy joins us from Boston. It's a big stretch, not only the Bruins tonight, but the Devils tomorrow. Not that you want to think about both games because you can't. But this is an important stretch for Carolina and it appears we're going to see Spencer Martin make his Hurricanes debut. Thoughts?

Well, AG, great to be with you as always. If I were to, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash in a back-to-back whichever way Rod goes in that. But if I had a choice, I'd go with Martin in this one. You know, because this is, I mean the Bruins have been clicking on all cylinders like they have been in the last several regular seasons. So they're going to need a performance tonight, but in the back of your head, you've got a divisional game.

Your first divisional matchup with the New Jersey Devils waiting for you tomorrow night. Ron wasn't as good Sunday against the Minnesota Wild in a stinging loss. Probably a game where Carolina would have won on a lot of nights.

There were some things that I could point to, but their effort was certainly very good. So for this back-to-back, I probably would go Martin and then Ronta with the comforts of home for Auntie Ronta. Either way, you're going to need solid goal tending on both nights to be able to come out of these two games with points. And then the Coyotes on Saturday night because that was a missed opportunity on Sunday against Minnesota. Oh, especially in the first period when you outscore a team 18-3, not to give Auntie Ronta a pass on the three goals he allowed, but I don't know that I fault him. I mean, you know better than I, but I don't know that I fault him on any of the three, especially with Carolina really being in position to make defensive plays, certainly on the first and third goals, and being unwilling or unable to do so. What is Dimitri Orloff doing other than marking Kirill Kaprizov right behind him? Yeah, I would respond to that by saying, and I'll start in front of Ronta, you know, you have that big moment for Orloff offensively, and you hope it's going to be a big moment for him, period, with Nathan reloading in the neutral zone, and because of that being able to aggressively hold the offensive blue line, keeping a puck in with his leg, and leading to a beautiful goal that nature scores.

And, you know, not so long after, I mean, Kirill Kaprizov, in a board battle, Kaprizov and company, they win it, they get it back to Goligovsky, and he took a breath. I mean, he lost the box out, you know, and I could live with it if Kaprizov is boxed out, meaning that Orloff is between Kirill Kaprizov and the Carolina net, and if he makes a heck of a redirection, you just tip your cap. But that's where Orloff could have been more physical, especially with Kaprizov on the ice, you can't take a breath.

The second goal, as great as Slavin has been this year, I think there's room for him to be more physical in boxing out with a purpose, Eric Sinek. Then the third goal, you know, with some type of a combination of a switch off, you lose a battle below the goal line where you had numbers, players, the Minnesotans, too, favor the defense and had jumped in. You lose that battle, which would have been a chance to clear the puck, and then all of a sudden you don't have a sort out, for me in particular, between Koke and Iemi and Orloff. So those are mistakes that get magnified when you run into a hot goal tender and you lose the game that otherwise wouldn't be magnified. In terms of the goaltending position, I wouldn't point to Antti for any of those three goals, but what I would say is if you have a locked in number one goal tender, I feel pretty comfortable in saying you're at least getting to overtime at 2-2, and possibly even winning the game 2-1.

But in terms of job responsibility, I don't look and say, well, the goal tender's got to have that. I just think somewhere in there you probably needed a save. Yeah, no, the third one, because it wasn't necessarily a great shot, it was basically forced through by Joel Eriksson Ek, and the second goal was a deflection and a great screen, but yeah, Slavin does lose the physical battle with Joel Eriksson Ek. I thought Minnesota's two best players, Ek and Kaprizov, they were the stories of the game, unfortunately, for Carolina. But another story is the absence of Andrei Svechnikov. This is now, we started the season without him. They played, I think, the first eight without him. Then he missed a handful of games in the middle.

I missed one for illness, but he missed a handful of games in the middle with an upper body injury. Now he's going to miss, my guess is four straight, because I don't, I can't imagine if he didn't practice yesterday, he's not going to play tomorrow, and I think they'll probably hold him out through the Arizona game on Saturday, but they are a different team without Andrei Svechnikov, which says a lot about the way Svech has grown as a player, but how do they overcome that? I'll repeat what I mentioned, partner in the Minnesota game, where you did enough to win, but another capacity crowd, I noticed Svechnikov's significant absence in a couple of different areas. Because Minnesota was stingy, and I thought more physical in both slots, Carolina missed his physical presence, and because of that, I thought there were stretches in the game where the building was pretty quiet, where the fans were itching to get themselves involved. I'm sitting there in the booth, and I'm like, yeah, this is where you miss Svechnikov, but you need that physicality.

Again, a good effort, but you need that physicality. And then on the power play, I know Rod liked the power play, and I'm not disagreeing with that, but I did think that the power play fell back into being perimeter based, not establishing the shot. You know, with Andrei, there was all sorts of motion, and we didn't see these power play sets where you were limited to the exterior of the rink. So for me, from a physical standpoint, and on that first unit power play, I did notice a difference.

And so what does that mean? That means as a group in an extremely tough building, with the moms here on the trip, that you're going to have to step up individually, therefore collectively, physically, and if the power play groupings remain the same, this is a huge game for Thabo Terevinin, because you lose a lefty in Svechnikov, different type of lefty in Terevinin, but he's going to have to have a really good night. And I think for him on the power play, he's got to be part of a power play, especially early on, that has to have a willingness to shoot the puck, because that breaks down the penalty killers, and you lose that perimeter theme that I thought was there at times against the wildfires. But the first power play and the first half, or the minute or so of the power play, the second one that they had, I thought both of those created opportunities. I thought the others were, for all of the zone time, incredibly stagnant and just passing the puck around without doing much with it.

They thought they wasted zone time. And the second, and Michael Bunning takes a penalty you can't take, to negate, which led to the second goal, right, because it happened right after. A smart man once told me that the power play really doesn't end until you get a whistle. I don't remember who that was.

I think his name was Trip Tracy. All right, let's get to a couple of other things. We have some guys that are really trying to find their way right now, and Carolina's, I mean, one of their weapons is their depth and their sameness across four lines. But it's been a long time for, yes, Perry, Coke, and Miami to be on the score sheet. It's been a long, I mean, I know Bunning scored the other game, but I think it's been a while since Michael has played really good hockey, certainly at five on five. How does Rod get these guys going?

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Well, I'll start with Cokie. I mean, because here's a big guy that can be physical. We just mentioned physicality.

That's a controllable. Now, you don't want to do it to get yourself out of position, but that's something when he has been rolling, which he was at this time last year, leading up to the outdoor game stadium series fair. I thought it's when he played his best hockey as a hurricane. And part of that is that he was very physical.

He was also defensively very trustworthy. And I mean, you look at the two games that they lost in regulation on the six-game homestand, when King scored those big third-period goals, he was on the ice. I mean, he was the centerman, whether it's he or Orloff, on the game-winning goal for American Act, Justin Williams' night, when the L.A. Kings scored those two goals in rapid succession, after Dano scored the go-ahead goal at the conclusion of a power play, where you're looking for that next whistle that you mentioned. So if it's not going in for him offensively, he definitely has to be reliable defensively.

So that's one area for him. And then I thought as good as, well, you had two really good chances in front to tie the hockey game, and Justin made two great saves. But prior to that, right at the end of the power play, Kokenyemi had a chance somewhere between the tops of the circles and the offensive blue line, and he can fire the puck if he would just wrist it. He's got all sorts of net front, and he hesitated. He took a breath, and that allowed Minnesota to block it. No hesitation when he shoots the puck. However, he delivers his shooting attempt, and being more physical and earning through hard work.

And no loss of focus whatsoever. Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it defensively. That for me is what gets Kokenyemi back on track, and do they ever need that badly? And for Bunting, I just look at Sunday's game as an incomplete performance.

There was plenty to the good. He scored a goal scorer's goal when he created a neutral zone turnover to tie the game at two, but right when he had a lot of momentum. I agree with you in the first power play and himself centrally included in the power play in the second period before he took an unnecessary penalty. That was really a significant change in the momentum of not just the period, but the hockey game. And he has a terrific opportunity, assuming the lines are going to be the same, playing with Sebastian Ajo. He's got to grab that opportunity, and he's got to be part of a power play group that, for the most part, has been ridiculously good, certainly among the top contenders of power play conversions in the NHL, that I don't see any way that they win the hockey game tonight if that power play isn't going. And he's a big part of that. He is. All right, let's close on, I mean, I know without Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, we assumed, I assumed, that Boston would not be as good.

That's what happens when you assume. David Pasternak is still out here doing his thing, but that is a team that just does not miss a beat. I mean, the word culture is sometimes overused, but I don't know what else it is, other than they still have good players, and they just, this is what they do. Yeah, I totally agree with everything you just said.

Why? Well, I think Jim Montgomery is a very good coach. Yeah. But their excellence certainly goes long before Jim Montgomery, and Bruce Cassidy is a very good coach.

And it looks, for the most part, the same every night. So they've been fortunate enough to have and locate very good goaltenders. And then they have a group of underrated defensemen. You know, I'll just mention a couple, whether it be McAvoy, whether it be Hamptas, Lynn Holm, Carl. They, they, they're, you know, a big defensive group that can skate.

And then up front, they have game breakers that never seem to get satisfied and play the game the correct way. Pasternak, you know, he could have, he could have had a little bit of lackadaisical play this year. He just signed an unbelievably lucrative eight-year deal during the course of last season.

No, that just makes him more determined. Brad Marchand more determined with the retirement of Patrice Bergeron. They, they have some, I think underrated depth upfront, but they don't lose that star matchup on many nights. Do they know, you know, they, they have that defensive foundation and goaltending well-coached as I mentioned, but not on a lot of nights, are they going to lose the matchup of your top players? And when you have all of those ingredients, you just replicate the fact that, you know, they're challenging for the league's best record once again this year.

And I know it's, at least for me, I think it's an outstanding Carolina that's playoff driven, but you can't help but admire what Boston's been able to do. All right, so back-to-back at Boston and then tomorrow at home against New Jersey. I'll see you on the fifth floor in a little bit. You got it.

Hopefully it's after two points on the road. Absolutely. All right, Trip. We'll be listening. I'll talk to you in a little while. You got it. See ya. Trip Tracy here on the Adam Gold show. Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we?

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