Carolina Hurricanes fans are hyped for a potential close out of the Montreal Canadiens

本站添加: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]That was one of my favorite goals of the season.

[00:00:03]The the Keandre Miller along the backside of the net flips it up to Jordan Staal who acts as a oak tree to deflect it off of and Jordan Staal gets the goal. That was the second of the three goals in less than three minutes last time the Canes were on the ice.

[00:00:20]That was on the road at Montreal and it ended up being a four to one to give the Canes a three to one lead in the series.

[00:00:28]And that puts the Canes in a position where they can close out the series tonight at home in the Lenovo Center which is just to our right as we broadcast from the plaza outside the Lenny between the Lenovo Center and Carter-Finley Stadium.

[00:00:42]Uh I want to address something that that uh I think it's true but isn't telling the whole story, okay?

[00:00:51]Yesterday one of the stats that I or not yeah, it was yesterday actually. One of the stats that I became kind of obsessed with was how much the Canes were out hitting Montreal in this series and and I wanted to make sure they kept doing it and kept being the more physical team and it's part of the reason I love Will Carrier but but everybody was getting involved.

[00:01:10]I that the over hitting the hit hit hit hit hit make Montreal bruised and battered if they want to attempt to come back and I I talked about it quite a bit yesterday. And one of the main responses I heard from from fans in person as well as listeners on social media was they learned from the Panthers, right?

[00:01:29]Or they learned from their last trip to the the Eastern Conference Finals or the previous trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. And that's not untrue, okay? That double negative there.

[00:01:39]That is true. The you you take a learning experience.

[00:01:43]But after eight years of making the post season, winning post season series, making it sometimes as far as the Eastern Conference Finals, sometimes the second round and losing in different ways to different teams.

[00:01:59]It's not just they learn from the Panthers. It's they're a smart franchise that takes something from each path, fixes it, and and tries again the next year. And if they don't advance, they then fix the reason they didn't advance that year. And over and over and over and over time, you just keep honing in your your roster, honing in your outlook, honing in your scheme, honing in everything about your postseason until you put yourself in a situation like you are today, where you're one game away from the Stanley Cup final.

[00:02:28]So, yes, last year Panthers perhaps they learned uh how to be more physical or the necessity of being more physical or the necessity of being a bit younger to deal with physicality. So, they went out and changed their roster and got younger in certain places and got bigger in certain places. But, the year before, right? I went back and I looked at they lost in the second round of the Rangers.

[00:02:51]>> Yeah.

[00:02:51]>> And guess what? Games two and games three were overtime losses to the Rangers.

[00:02:56]That's right. And you look at their overtime performances this year, five and oh.

[00:03:01]>> Five and oh. All by the score of 3-2.

[00:03:03]>> And I'm like, okay, so they probably said, "We need to get better in overtime. We need to have uh maybe somebody like Nikolaj Ehlers, maybe somebody like Jackson Blake that's more of a stone-cold scorer in those situations to go ahead and win in overtime." Year before, they're swept by the Panthers, scored six goals in four games. And plus in that series, five total overtimes, right? So, six goals, four games, plus five, that's almost five and change games, right? Uh what did they learn? Well, guess what?

[00:03:33]The next season, at the the trade deadline, they went and got Jake Guentzel. The year after that, they went and got Mikko Rantanen and then obviously had to pivot. But, do you think when you score that many goals in an Eastern Conference finals or that few goals in an Eastern Conference finals, you go, "You know what we need?

[00:03:49]Stone-cold scorer." And they went out and took big swings on Stone Cold scores, and Ehlers, another one this year, it works. We could go on and on.

[00:03:57]Year before they started 2 and 0 at home, lost two on the road to the Rangers.

[00:04:01]Well, guess what? They're undefeated on the road this year. Perhaps they honed in how they play on the road. Like there's there's Of course, every loss you're going to see it in how you move forward. You'd be foolish not to. Right?

[00:04:15]You'd be foolish not to have a tremendous amount of momentum going into the postseason, fall short of your goals, and not look around and go, "What did they best us at? Mhm. Let's go and prove that." So, the Canes are not looking at the Panthers and saying like, "Oh, we're just emulating the team that beat us." They're looking at the last 8 years of getting a little better each year until I think it's fair to say at this point, but we've been saying it for a long time, this is the best version of this core of the Canes. Right? The Rod Brind'Amour era, this is the best version. We would have said that prior to knowing that they've make it further than any team in the Rod Brind'Amour coaching era. It's it's You got to you have to keep doing it, right? It would be foolish not to.

[00:04:59]>> Well, you look back last year, what what really hurt them in the playoffs? The lack of defensive depth. When they had a couple guys injured, all of a sudden we're throwing out Nikishin, who literally just stepped off a plane from Russia, and Scott Morrow, who just simply wasn't ready and just couldn't skate at the level needed for the playoffs.

[00:05:14]So, guess what they did. Okay, they got they went and got younger on defense with K'Andre Miller, and obviously and Nikishin being ready, but let's go get Mike Reilly, a veteran as our seventh defenseman, who has playoff experience.

[00:05:26]Oh, Nikishin gets hurt in game four against Ottawa. He's not able to play the first two games against Philly.

[00:05:32]Well, what happens?

[00:05:34]Mike Reilly steps in, game one, gets a pair of assists. Yep. Like that it's those kinds of little things. It's just the depth that they've added across the organization. Going out and and adding with Nikolaj Ehlers as well. Like adding the depth, this is the deepest team that they've ever had.

[00:05:46]>> We have some uh some listeners here that that stopped by to listen. Give us your first goal score prediction.

[00:05:51]>> Uh I'm going to go with Noek Sako for the first period.

[00:05:53]>> Say are you the IRISH YOU'RE THE IRISH GUY?

[00:05:56]SICK DOWN RIGHT HERE.

[00:05:57]>> HERE.

[00:05:57]>> SICK DOWN RIGHT HERE.

[00:05:58]>> ALL RIGHT. SO, the the just so everybody knows, I didn't just look at a random listener and yell, "Are you the Irish guy?"

[00:06:05]Yesterday on social media, was it one of these guys that reached out to me? All right, cool. So, so you were in the area >> on right there.

[00:06:11]>> when you were in the area when you were younger?

[00:06:14]Is that >> Yeah, back in 2008, yeah.

[00:06:16]>> All right. Tell Tell the listeners your name, by the way.

[00:06:18]>> Hi, I'm Alex uh from Dublin, Ireland, and looking forward to the game tonight.

[00:06:23]>> Nice.

[00:06:23]>> There we go. Uh so, you're in the area back in 2008.

[00:06:26]>> Yeah, uh which would have been relatively fresh off of the the last Stanley Cup that they won.

[00:06:31]>> Yeah.

[00:06:32]>> Carcains fever then.

[00:06:33]Went back to Ireland, hung out in Dublin for decade plus.

[00:06:36]>> Exactly.

[00:06:37]>> And now you're back in the area, just happened to be around this time.

[00:06:40]>> I know, I heard rumors that these guys were playing some some good ice hockey, so I had to come back and see it for myself.

[00:06:46]>> I I first of all love that. Uh second of all, did you follow them while you were over there? Like, is it easy to follow the Canes in Ireland? Is there a hockey presence?

[00:06:54]>> Not as much so, but like I tried to keep up with kind of the score lines and kind of as best as I could, you know what I mean?

[00:07:00]>> All right. And then a puck drops at like 4:00 a.m. over there or whatever.

[00:07:04]>> Exactly. [laughter] You know, that doesn't happen.

[00:07:06]>> I just Sorry, I don't keep up on my my time differences with Ireland. Um So, uh let let's let's Why First of all, 2008, you were here for some kind of an exchange program? Is that what was going on? Or were you just visiting?

[00:07:17]>> 2008, my father came over here for work, so we had to move over the entire family.

[00:07:21]>> He was 5 years old?

[00:07:22]>> 5 years old, yeah.

[00:07:24]>> How long did you live here?

[00:07:25]>> Lived here for I think we moved back in 2009, and then um yeah, come to visit now on a J-1 program this year.

[00:07:31]>> All right. So, so over there, what's your favorite sport?

[00:07:35]>> Uh big rugby man myself, but I think nothing beats hurling. Uh no, hurling is absolutely brilliant, brilliant to watch, brilliant to play, and brilliant crowds. Hurling, this is Pardon me for my lack of cultural knowledge. That's the one with like the It's almost like a field hockey stick, but it's like a half bat sort of thing?

[00:07:51]>> Yeah, wooden stick, um, played on grass, and no pads, just a helmet, and >> All right, you didn't have to You didn't have to sneak in the like, "Oh, these guys are all wearing pads [laughter] and mouthpieces and everything." They don't wear bottoms of the cage, so they they pucks off the mouth, all right?

[00:08:05]Uh, which Set Jarvis did last game. Uh, first of all, wel- welcome back to the area. Hopefully it's it's living up to all the hype and all your memories and nostalgia and everything.

[00:08:15]Uh, happy to have you. Go Canes. Do you have a score prediction for us?

[00:08:19]>> Ooh, last game four four-nil, I'm going to go with I'm going to say they're going to put another good performance.

[00:08:25]I'm going to go three-nil. Three-nil.

[00:08:26]>> Three-nil?

[00:08:27]>> Three-nil.

[00:08:27]>> Three-nil? What a what a European way to say that. Nil, right?

[00:08:30]>> [laughter] >> Uh, we appreciate you for stopping by. Enjoy the game. Dennis has some questions.

[00:08:35]>> I have more questions here for you.

[00:08:36]Again, this is this is Alex, he's from Dublin, Ireland. He's a huge Caniac. And the fact that you fell in love with this team when you're 5 years old, now that you're back here watching the game, I I'm curious what for you as as someone who enjoys a sport that probably not many people in Ireland follow. How difficult is to connect with other people in terms of the sport like, "Hey, you guys should watch this. You guys like this ice hockey thing." How hard is it to connect with other people back home in terms of like sharing that culture of ice hockey or at least sharing your fandom?

[00:09:06]>> Uh, to be fair now, uh, most colleges will have a society that will be hugely involved in the ice hockey. So, I've recently moved up to go to Belfast for college, and they have a huge ice hockey society, and Belfast have a team, Belfast Giants ice hockey team. I was Really was looking forward to going to a game, and I ended up missing it, so I was disappointed, but it's actually like it'd be more You'd be surprised on kind of the interactions that we have back at home.

[00:09:29]>> Okay, cuz I mean you you missed that game for this game. I think that's totally understandable. [laughter] So, I because I know a lot of people here in the United States might follow Premier League Premier League soccer. So, it's obviously but there's because it's across across the Atlantic, it's hard for us to to fully immerse ourselves in it. That's why I'm curious how it is is for you and in terms of like a hockey culture. Obviously, there's soccer here at different levels all across the United States, but yeah again, you don't hear much about Irish hockey.

[00:09:56]>> No, yeah.

[00:09:57]Um like you said before with the the timing issues can sometimes be difficult. But if you have a good crowd of mates, you organize someone will have the channel you organize out this day there's Canes game. We're going to organize save blade. Just get a good crowd around you and enjoy the game whether it's whatever time at night or 4:00 in the morning. You You still just want to enjoy it. So, you organize a good crowd and it can be absolutely brilliant at times.

[00:10:17]>> That's so awesome.

[00:10:17]>> I just did some Googling. There's a couple couple guys from Denmark on the team. That's about a 2-hour and 10-minute flight from from Ireland. So, from Dublin Airport, you can be there in 2 hours and 10 minutes. So, maybe you're just a you're a big Nikolai Ehlers guy and a big Freddy Andersen guy.

[00:10:30]>> Okay, yeah. We'll say that so.

[00:10:31]>> Cool.

[00:10:32]>> Who is your favorite Cane?

[00:10:33]>> Right >> His Well, your first goal scorer was Stankoven, right?

[00:10:37]>> Yeah, I think he's a good goal. Yeah, I think I'm I'm going to back him. I'm going to say Logan Stankoven. I think he I know he scored I think it was at the third goal in the last game two nights ago. So, yeah. I'm going to back him. I think he's a great player.

[00:10:46]>> He was also probably, you know, a little young to remember all the details last time they won a cup. You had two and three years old kind of >> [laughter] >> makes sense. So, so you and Stanky are of the same generation.

[00:10:56]>> Yeah.

[00:10:57]>> We appreciate you for jumping on with us.

[00:10:58]>> Listen, thanks very much for having me guys.

[00:10:59]>> Of course. Absolutely, Alex.

[00:11:01]>> Go Canes. Go Canes.

[00:11:02]>> There you go.

[00:11:05]And he's going to the game.

[00:11:08]You will have his socks blown off is what what his his crew is saying here. I agree.