Given the Olympic break in this year\u2019s NHL regular season, and the time constraints to fit the whole season in before all the ice melts of natural causes, teams across the league are dealing with myriad back-to-back game weekends this season.<\/p>\n
Pardon the Hurricanes if they\u2019re not sympathetic to other teams\u2019 plight. Sunday\u2019s 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens was the second leg of the Canes\u2019 13th of 15 back-to-back set this season. Carolina is 8-2-3 this season in the first of back-to-back games, but just 6-6-1 in Game 2s after Sunday\u2019s result.<\/p>\n
Though it came on the heels of a rare three-day break in the schedule, this weekend\u2019s back-to-back set was the first of three such sets in the final 11 games of the regular season for Carolina, which continues to sit atop the NHL\u2019s Metropolitan Division and is vying for the top playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Now, with nine games remaining, the playoffs have essentially arrived, if not for the Canes then certainly for a handful of the teams remaining on their schedule, which will serve to ramp up the intensity and theoretically help prepare Carolina for the rigors of the playoff chase.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes are going to have to do a better job handling that than they did Sunday.<\/p>\n
Andrei Svechnikov was a bright spot early for Carolina, but three Montreal goals in the second period set the Canadiens up for victory, their sixth in seven games as they try to fend off Boston and maintain a hold on third place in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n
Nick Suzuki scored twice in the second for the Habs and added an assist on Cole Caufield\u2019s 46th goal of the season. Suzuki\u2019s second of the frame came with seven seconds to play, on a power play, and sent the Canes into the locker room reeling.<\/p>\n
Svechnikov put the Hurricanes on the board first at 8:37 of the first period as part of the Canes\u2019 suddenly red-hot power play. After Martinook drew the call, the top unit went to work and Svechnikov beat Dobes with a wired one-timer from the top of the right circle over the keeper\u2019s short-side left shoulder.<\/p>\n
Suzuki\u2019s first of the game, on a feed from Caufield on a fast break, tied the game after a period of extended Carolina pressure, and came on just the eighth shot on goal against Frederik Andersen.<\/p>\n
Caufield\u2019s marker came on a wrister from the mid-slot after he shook free and beat Andersen under the arm on the blocker side. Suzuki\u2019s second came on the doorstep on the power play after Eric Robinson was penalized for tripping the Canadiens\u2019 Noah Dobson.<\/p>\n
Carolina fought off one penalty kill in the third period, and failed on two more power play chances. The Hurricanes also pulled the goalie in the game\u2019s final minutes, but could draw no closer.<\/p>\n
The Canes play six of their final nine regular-season games on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given the Olympic break in this year\u2019s NHL regular season, and the time constraints to fit the whole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5107],"tags":[1742,194,29,5176,5,195,61130,21,4,61131],"class_list":{"0":"post-531180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-andrei-svechnikov","9":"tag-carolina","10":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","11":"tag-carolinahurricanes","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-hurricanes","14":"tag-hurricanes-canadiens","15":"tag-montreal-canadiens","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-nhl-loss"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}