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GDT: Canes v. Pens 11/7 7:00

A

andyt

Canes Moderator
Staff member
The Canes close out the homestand with Cary’s favorite team.

After a sloppy win over the Flyers on Tuesday, the Canes look to clean things up on the defensive end. Hopefully the ice is better too. Martin Necas is on fire, with 17 points in his last 7 games. Svech has 8 in his last 6. No word on who goes in goal tonight.

The Pens are coming off a shootout loss to the Islanders on Tuesday. It was their 3rd straight game with a point, but they’re 3-5-2 in their last 10. They’re tied for 5th in the division with 12 points in 14 games. Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell have 6 goals, Evgeni Malkin has 12 assists and leads with 16 points. He and Crosby are averaging more than a point per game. Old friend Alex Nedeljkovic has started the last 3 games in goal and appears to have grabbed the starting spot. He’s at 2.76/.900 in 6 games. He’s backed up by Joel Blomqvist, who faced the Canes last month. He's at 3.46/.909 in 6 games.

Red jerseys tonight, Fan Duel for TV.
 
Remember kids ... basketball season has started and the ice always takes a while to settle down once they start covering it regularly. This swampy weather ain't helping either.
 
So ... Pittsburgh.

I don't think anybody outside of western PA really buys the Pens as a playoff contender, but their goaltending was so bad early on that it's been really easy to make excuses. Now that Ned's back, they can put poor Jarry out of his misery for a while, which simply cannot hurt the bottom line. Meanwhile they can settle down to figure out how much of that awful -13 goal diff is on the keepers, how much is on their rickety D corps and how much is on their forward group. This team is old, slow and weird. So many big names, so little support and a coach that doesn't even really bother with a system anymore. They just go out and do whatever and hope Sid, Geno and Karlsson put enough pucks in the net to win the game. It's a way to go, I guess.

That team on paper should have real trouble with the all pressure all the time Canes, but Carolina looked pretty terrible in their last outing. Hopefully they get back on the grind again, and this opponent should offer the opportunity. We'll see.
 
Pens are old and somewhat a mess, I expect the Canes to play much better than Tuesday night and that together means a Big Canes W tonight. 10-2 has a nice ring to it!
 
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