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GDT: Canes v. Rangers Game 1 5/18 7:00

A

andyt

Canes Moderator
Staff member
The series finally gets underway.

The Canes went 3-1 against the Rangers in the regular season, 2-1 against Shesterkin. Everyone but Andersen was at practice the last 2 days. It looks like Lorentz will stay on the 4th line, Stepan was skating with Bear yesterday.

The Rangers came back from a 3-1 series deficit and trailed in all 3 elimination games. Predictably, they got the winner on the power play; they scored 6 PP goals in the series and converted 31.6% of their chances. Half of Kreider’s 52 regular season goals came on the PP. He led them with 5 goals in the first round, Zibanejad had 8 assists. Shesterkin wasn’t great against the Pens, he was 3.66/.910. If he regains his regular season form, this will be a long series.

No local TV for the rest of the playoffs, this series is on ESPN. Bally Sports South will have pre- and post-game shows and Mike and Shane will have the radio call.
 
andyt said:
The series finally gets underway.

The Canes went 3-1 against the Rangers in the regular season, 2-1 against Shesterkin. Everyone but Andersen was at practice the last 2 days. It looks like Lorentz will stay on the 4th line, Stepan was skating with Bear yesterday.

The Rangers came back from a 3-1 series deficit and trailed in all 3 elimination games. Predictably, they got the winner on the power play; they scored 6 PP goals in the series and converted 31.6% of their chances. Half of Kreider’s 52 regular season goals came on the PP. He led them with 5 goals in the first round, Zibanejad had 8 assists. Shesterkin wasn’t great against the Pens, he was 3.66/.910. If he regains his regular season form, this will be a long series.

No local TV for the rest of the playoffs, this series is on ESPN. Bally Sports South will have pre- and post-game shows and Mike and Shane will have the radio call.
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I thought our loss was to Georgiev..
 
Tryamw said:
I thought our loss was to Georgiev..
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You are correct, sir.

January 21 PNC Arena Canes win 6-3, Georgiev with the loss
March 20 PNC Arena Rangers win 2-0, Georgiev with the 44 save win
April 12 MSG Canes win 4-2, Shesterkin with the loss
April 26 MSG Canes win 4-3, Shesterkin with the loss
 
That is all regular season of course, but it is encouraging that we managed to score a lot of goals against the Rangers. Georgiev was ridiculous in that one shutout loss.

My daughter mentioned she came across a post which claimed that Shesterkin's crazy good numbers in the regular season were really a result of piling up great performances against the 'lesser' teams. His numbers against 'better' teams were rather pedestrian. I suspect that is mostly true of EVERY goalie in the league, but the Canes figured out a way to get pucks by him in the regular season and the Pens sure had no issues in the 1st round.

Just be relentless Canes, let's do this!

----EDIT----

That 'post' about Shesterkin padding his stats against 'lesser' teams apparently had no basis in fact.

Shesterkin's numbers in the regular season against the top 16 teams in terms of goal scoring?

2.24 GAA .933 Sv%

Those are not all that far off his full season numbers.

Pretty much didn't matter the opponent, he was sensational in the regular season. Now let's light him up!
 
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Unfortunately, I'm in Covid protocol (even thought I don't have any noticeable symptoms), so I won't be going to the game tonight. Dammit.
 
Game 1 ... LFG

OK, this is a clash of systems and styles. Carolina is a volume team on offense, and they struggle when they can't get zone time or when they don't get play funneled down the middle to create traffic. NY is a rush team. They are absolutely murder on the rush and struggle to score when forced to grind out chances. By consequence, Shesterkin can stand on his head and still get beaten by sheer volume, which is exactly what Pittsburgh did to the Rangers in the first round. The Pens were undone by their own shoddy goaltending, and it will be important for whomever is in the Canes' crease to STAY AWAKE back there. Chances against tend to come in flurries, followed by lulls. Switch off during the down cycles and you're gonna have a hard time dealing with Kreider and Zibanejad flying at you at a million miles an hour out of nowhere.

For Carolina, I think we're looking at two keys early on ... limiting odd man breakouts and keeping a lid on their power play. Carolina did a decent job against Boston's PP, but still ended that series a good 7 or 8 percentage points below their regular season PK rate and it cost them dearly on the road. Getting a strong effort on the kill right out of the gate would be huge in this series. And they should be well practiced for what NY does, since it's gonna look a lot like Boston's first unit. They love that cross-seamer and have quality shooters on both walls. The odd man rush thing is something that really plagued Carolina in their roughest patches of the 21-22 season, and that's the Rangers' stock in trade. They've got flyers who will stretch the zone and they'll go for risky passes out of the back. Putting pressure on their D and taking away time to find those long connections is important, but so is being a little bit prudent on the positioning of your D.

For the Canes to get the leverage to take advantage of their depth, they've got to force possession into NY's zone and grind out that D. Make their top two lines defend and blunt their ability to break you down at speed and then turn the Trocheck and Kotkaniemi lines loose on the Rangers' bottom 6. Carolina can skate with NY, but you do NOT want this to be a track meet. They convert on the rush really well, while Carolina's best production comes from their forecheck. Make 'em work, boys ... all night.
 
Shesterkin had 13 games with a sub-.900 save %. There were 2 each against the Canes, Stars and Flames and then single games against hte Yotes, Bolts, Flyers, Panthers, Islanders, Devils and Blues. There were 11 more below his season average .935 save %; Leafs twice and single games against the Islanders, Flyers, Panthers, Pens, Canucks, Bruins, Wild, Jackets and Blues. His 6 shutouts were against the Jets, Wings, Pens, Sharks, Bolts and Jackets. So I’m not sure we can draw conclusions about playing better against lousy teams.
 
Lines at the morning skate, per Walt Ruff. No changes on defense, Raanta in the starter’s crease.

Svechnikov - Aho - Jarvis
Domi - Trocheck - Teravainen
Niederreiter - Staal - Fast
Lorentz - Kotkaniemi - Necas
 
Love the lines, gotta get the boys moving early. Don't let the Cary contingent pulling for the Rags get into the game; every time they want to be vocal drown them out. Looking forward to this one, the pressure from Canes / Bruins was almost too much.
 
andyt said:
Shesterkin had 13 games with a sub-.900 save %. There were 2 each against the Canes, Stars and Flames and then single games against hte Yotes, Bolts, Flyers, Panthers, Islanders, Devils and Blues. There were 11 more below his season average .935 save %; Leafs twice and single games against the Islanders, Flyers, Panthers, Pens, Canucks, Bruins, Wild, Jackets and Blues. His 6 shutouts were against the Jets, Wings, Pens, Sharks, Bolts and Jackets. So I’m not sure we can draw conclusions about playing better against lousy teams.
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Shesterkin's usage this season was weird anyway. He missed a couple of chunks with minor injuries but their rotation when he and Georgiev were both heathy was erratic. It's hard to make sweeping generalizations about that stuff anyway.
 
jeffbear said:
Shesterkin's usage this season was weird anyway. He missed a couple of chunks with minor injuries but their rotation when he and Georgiev were both heathy was erratic. It's hard to make sweeping generalizations about that stuff anyway.
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We're sports fans. Making sweeping generalizations is what we do.
 
Tonight’s officials:

Referees:
Dan O’Rourke #9, Frederick L’Ecuyer #17

Linesmen:
Kiel Murchison #79, Mark Shewchyk #92

Standby official: Jon McIssac #2
Series Supervisor: Paul Devorski

We had O’Rourke for game 2 with Pochmara and we had L’Ecuyer with Lee for game 4. O’Rourke called the most penalties in the first round, averaging more than 40 PIM, L’Ecuyer called the fewest, averaging 16 PIM. O’Rourke also awarded 61.7% of power plays to the home team.
 
Following up on some previous chatter ... now that game day is upon us I'm seeing more and more previews and predictions from media types. Most people who's voices I respect are figuring this is a long series, while tipping it for the Canes. A lot of the people predicting 5 games are TV twits. So yeah, anyone who is selling the "fast series, speed bump, roadkill" narrative is probably just stuck in 2020 when Carolina did exactly that to the Rangers. Problem being ... this is NOT 2020. Thank God. I'd take the sweep, sure ... but not that stage of the pandemic and the bubble.
 
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