Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour looked like a deer in headlights as he was absolutely dumbfounded losing to the New York Rangers again in Game 3 on Thursday.
After watching Artemi Panarin make a beautiful between-the-legs tip goal just 1:43 into overtime, Brind’Amour was left exasperated. Back-to-back overtime losses, coupled with a Game 1 defeat have the third-best team in the NHL one game away from elimination in this Eastern Conference Second Round series.
“We’re focusing on how bad we’re playing, but we’re really playing pretty damn good,” Brind’Amour lamented afterwards. “There’s two games going on here, if you want to write the right story. We’re losing one badly, but we’re doing pretty damn good on the other one.”
Excuse me, what?
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Hurricanes coach baffled by Rangers
I get it. If you choose to look at it from a pure shots-on-goal metric, the Hurricanes have outshot the Rangers by a huge 129-87 margin. The darlings of the analytics community also have a major advantage in CorsiFor percentage (which measures shot attempts) 57.3 to 42.7 through three games.
Well, that’s great, but you don’t get style points in the playoffs. You also don’t play the entire game at even strength, and the Hurricanes have been abysmal on special teams.
Carolina has a big fat goose egg on 15 power-play attempts. They also allowed a critical shorthanded goal to Chris Kreider, during the second period Thursday when they were up 1-0, leading to their eventual demise.
“Sucked the life right out of us,” Brind’Amour noted.
Of course, Brind’Amour gave the Rangers credit, especially goalie Igor Shesterkin by calling him “world-class.” That being said, Shesterkin is part of a team that has now won seven straight postseason games after winning the Presidents’ Trophy with 114 regular-season points.
A team that has its stars like Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, and Vincent Trocheck outplaying his stars when it matters most.
