The Carolina Hurricanes have taken one important step, but they clearly want to accomplish more in the final weeks of the regular season.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll have a chance to do that when the New York Islanders visit for Saturday night\u2019s game in Raleigh, N.C.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes (48-21-6, 102 points) will play their first game since clinching a playoff spot with Thursday night\u2019s 5-1 home victory against the Columbus Blue Jackets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been that many downs, to be quite honest,\u201d Carolina coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cWe\u2019ve played pretty consistently throughout this year, and I think that shows.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the eighth consecutive season that the Hurricanes have qualified for the postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be good for six months,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said of the achievement of withstanding the physical and mental grind. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to finish out the year hard and get across the finish line (of the regular season) the best that we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Islanders (42-30-5, 89 points) are teetering on the Eastern Conference playoff line, and they\u2019ll take a three-game losing streak into Saturday\u2019s game. They lost 4-1 at home to the Philadelphia Flyers on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Islanders coach Patrick Roy said the team needs to take care of its own business without being distracted by results of other games.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is watching every game. Everybody is watching the standings,\u201d Roy said. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s about what you do. \u2026 If you start thinking about what\u2019s happening around you, this is where problems start.\u201d<\/p>\n
During their current skid, they\u2019ve been outscored 16-7.<\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Division-leading Hurricanes still are in a battle for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, so there\u2019s more to accomplish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always room to improve, and hopefully we can keep it going and be even better coming down the stretch,\u201d Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho said.<\/p>\n
Carolina allowed only 10 shots on goal by Columbus, matching the fewest allowed in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes, who\u2019ve won three of their last four games, have received regular contributions from captain Jordan Staal, who played in his 1,400th career game Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the leader of all that,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes insist they don\u2019t want to let up, particularly with the chance to secure the top seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year is a unique opportunity again,\u201d Aho said.<\/p>\n
For the Islanders, Saturday marks the third set of games on back-to-back days in a two-week period. Goalie Ilya Sorokin has handled both ends of those in both previous cases, going 1-1 in the back ends of those assignments. He has played in 10 consecutive games, though Roy was non-committal on the team\u2019s goalie plan for Saturday.<\/p>\n
Roy said New York likely will be without defenseman Tony DeAngelo, a former Hurricane dealing with a lower-body injury, for the Carolina trip.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes topped the Islanders 6-2 on Oct. 30. Despite the gap in the schedule, there might not be any surprises Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no secrets,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cEverybody knows what everybody is doing. You got to go talk about execution. You\u2019ve got to go do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Islanders and Hurricanes also will meet in the regular-season finale April 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Carolina Hurricanes have taken one important step, but they clearly want to accomplish more in the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5107],"tags":[194,29,5176,5,195,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-540755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","10":"tag-carolinahurricanes","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hurricanes","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116347967100283723","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540755","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=540755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}