How are the Hurricanes dissecting the Canadiens?
The Montreal Canadiens are in trouble.
After losing Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final to the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night, the Canadiens find themselves in a 2-1 hole and at risk of elimination heading back to Raleigh for Game 5.
After winning the first game of the series, the Canadiens have been hindered by the defensively sound Hurricanes, who have held Montreal to just 25 shots on goal over the past two games. While both games have gone to overtime, and Carolina has relied on timely goals, the way the Metropolitan Division champions have limited the Habs’ top offensive weapons.
On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Jeff Marek of The Sheet joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to discuss how the Hurricanes are taking care of business against the Canadiens.
Jeff Marek: When you look at the construction of the Carolina Hurricanes, a couple of things come to mind. There’s a very specific type of player that, um, that Eric Tulsky covets, and that Eric Tulsky goes out and secures. One, you have to be wildly athletic. You need to be in great shape, and two, you need to really be an athlete, and you need to be able to think and think quickly.
They play an incredibly suffocating, discipline style…When you look at how Carolina plays, when they lose series, and they lost it last year to the to the Florida Panthers, and Florida did a couple of things. One, they got bullied, like, absolutely bullied the Carolina Hurricanes…But when Carolina’s system breaks down in their own zone, like, that man-to-man is really hard to play, but when it breaks down, it’s amazing how much ice is available.
I always tell people, if you’re gonna go see the Carolina Hurricanes play live, don’t sit close to the glass. Sit up high because you’ll really get a sense of how much ice is actually available when you’re playing Carolina. Because when it breaks down, it’s like, “Wow, look at this path to the net. Wow, look at all this ice you have to, to, to actually work here.” You don’t get that against other teams because teams don’t play that way on, the Carolina Hurricanes. So, I guess the goal is to try to break down the Hurricanes in their own zone, easier said than done.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…