The Canes are facing elimination.
With five minutes left in the second period of Game 3, the Carolina Hurricanes resembled the team from the first two rounds.
The second power play unit moved the puck effectively, found room below the dots, and drew the Florida defenders out just enough to slip two Canes by to clean up the rebound off a shot from the point.
The Hurricanes won the period and had some life with the score tied at one.
Florida responded just a minute and a half into the third, but Carolina was still in it.
Until they weren’t.
The Panthers scored four goals in four minutes to earn another blowout victory, putting the Hurricanes on the brink of elimination.
It is hard to describe how quickly the game was lost on Saturday. The swift and sudden collapse resembled a Sunday night beer league game between the best and worst teams.
Head coach Rod Brind’Amour was very direct in his assessment of the effort in Game 3:
The four rookies in the lineup can’t be some of your better players. Like, that can’t happen. So there’s a couple guys in there that I don’t think came to play the way they needed to in this type of time of year… It can’t be Jordan Staal and Martinook being our best players like that. That can’t always be that way. And there they are every night. So we needed more out of some guys.
In Game 3, Andrei Svenchnikov did not register a shot, and Seth Jarvis’s lone shot came on his goal to make it 6-2.
Dmitry Orlov was put in a tough spot playing his off-side, but his positioning and giveaways were completely unacceptable.
And the lack of response by the Hurricanes after the cheap shots on Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho was embarrassing. If the Canes were playing for pride on Saturday, it was given away during the third period.
There is little more to say about the game plan or expectations for Game 4. Climbing out of a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is next to impossible anyway, but after Carolina was beaten down in the first three games, it is a reasonable goal to just not lose by more than three.
Jalen Chatfield and Sean Walker did not participate in morning skates, so expect the same lineup from Carolina. There is no word on the starting goaltender yet.
Florida will be without Sam Reinhard and AJ Greer, and likely without Niko Mikkola.
In this moment, the Canes are down and nearly out. It is easy to lose perspective after head-scratching and head-spinning games, but the Panthers deserve a lot of credit.
And the Hurricanes made it this far, and 28 other clubs cannot say the same.
Here’s how to check out the action:
- Time: 8:00 PM ET
- Location: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise, FL
- TV: TNT, truTV, Max; SN, TVAS
- Radio: 99.9 The Fan with Mike Maniscalco, play-by-play; Tripp Tracy, color analyst.
- Line: ML: CAR +154; PL: CAR +1.5 -162