Tonight was exhausting.
I’ve never been as tired driving home from a Hockey game as I was leaving RBC Center after the Carolina Hurricanes’ 5-2 lose tonight (Bear in mind, I play in a local adult league where we have games beginning at 11:40 pm).
I’m sure everyone within the Canes locker room feels the same way, including new old Head Coach Paul Maurice. Yesterday, I had a conversation with NBC17 (Raleigh, NC) Sports Director Penn Holderness. And I was hesitant to give an opinion on Maurice, if he was a good choice. But I’ve decided, he’s the right man for the job right now.
Tonight, the Canes played the first seven minutes of the game the way, I suspect, Coach Maurice wanted. They generated offensive changes, holding play in the offensive zone and got shots on net all while playing conservatively on defense — and not allowing their opponents to gain any scoring opportunities. For the first time since early November there was positive energy throughout the building, but it didn’t stick around too long.
The Canes took two consecutive penalties, eventually yielding the lead. After that, everything fell apart and the team lost control of the game. They ignored the subtle changes they added in the past two days in practice. The players went back to their normal tendencies from playing Peter Laviolette’s system, a system that needs to be scrapped if you want to use Canes’ minor league affiliate in Albany as a case study.
Maurice will have need time to break all of the players’ bad habits, but something other than coaching will be needed to turn the Hurricanes’ fortune around.
It’s going to take a change in leadership. More on that tomorrow.
Patrick Clarke is an editor and publisher for TheDesk
1 Comment
December 5, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[...] 1:23 pm Well the 1st game is in the book for Coach Maurice of the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Desk blog has a great recap of how things went. From the post it looks like the game started off well but [...]
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