Hope you enjoyed your extra hour of sleep. You’ll need to be in motion earlier than usual today.
The Hurricanes play their first home Sunday match today, and it’s also the first of the shifted start times for the home fans. Those familiar with their previous Sunday starts will remember they usually played around five or six PM, but today sees that face off happen a little after one PM. It’s not a rarity—all of their Sunday home games this season except one, the January 17th rematch against Vegas,
will face off at that time.
There are likely multiple reasons for this. Keep in mind this is just speculation, but between the fact that the NHL has been hoping to increase their primetime opportunities in Europe and that the Hurricanes are headed over to Finland in less than two weeks, not to mention how much more family-friendly a one PM start is versus a five or six, the move makes sense. It’ll just come as a surprise if you plan your Sundays in the fall around watching the NFL. Ironically it was the Thursday game that conflicted some with Panthers football, not today.
Today’s tilt sees the Canes face off against the Winnipeg Jets. You may have heard that they made some news a week ago by finally unloading a headache in Connor Hellebuyck. It was a looming shadow over their first game, especially with reports linking the Canes as the only team to really be seriously pursuing him. Carolina won that game at the beginning of the State Fair Road Trip, but they needed a Power Play goal in the third period by Nikolaj Ehlers.
Getting rid of the headache hasn’t exactly helped the Jets, and they’ve been doing a great job of showing why Hellebuyck was trying to move teams. The loss to Carolina was their second in a row, and haven’t won since growing the streak to eight. They’ve only gotten points in two and that includes losing their outdoor game in the Heritage Classic last weekend. Streaks like this in the NHL are rare, so you wonder just how much fire the Jets will come out with to try and stem the bleeding.
The good news for Winnipeg is that the west is such a cluster that even with those eight straight losses they are still only four points out of a Wild Card spot. Yes, it’s early to be looking at playoff positioning but that’s more to note that they still haven’t played their way out of a spot yet.
We’ll see what if any changes the Jets make. They had a back-to-back in the state of Florida between Thursday and Friday, so they were given a full day off on Saturday before making the trip up to the Triangle. Nico Daws made his Jets debut on Friday in the loss to the Panthers, so with the short turnaround one would think that means Stuart Skinner will man the crease again, but with Daws coming from New Jersey, they may want his familiarity against the Canes. There’s also Clay Stevenson who started against Carolina a couple weeks ago and stopped 34 of 37 shots. However the last time he was seen in the crease it was getting shelled at home against Florida.
For the Canes, they took Friday off after the sleepy win against Columbus, enjoying the fruits of their labor and celebrating Halloween. They were back on the ice Saturday—over at the Wake Competition Center since NC State had a home game—and observers noted no changes to the lines, and once again Pyotr Kochetkov was manning the crease reserved for the starter. The extra day between games and Kochetkov’s undefeated record is likely going to keep him in the crease since the early start means no morning skate.
A promising sign for fans who were concerned about the Hurricanes resting on their laurels after winning the Cup is how they reacted after Thursday’s win. While Kochetkov was fine with them getting three goals, to a man the team and coach sounded more like they had lost based on how they played in the second and third periods. That usually means they come out with a fire the next game, and that could mean trouble for Winnipeg.
Again, it’s an early start in Raleigh. If you aren’t going to be in the arena here’s how you can catch the action—
Time: 1 PM Eastern
Location: Lenovo Center — Raleigh, NC
TV: Hurricanes Hockey Network. Hanna Yates and Shane Willis will handle the pregame duties at 12:30, and then Mike Maniscalco handles play-by-play with Tripp Tracy providing color—You can catch HHN on Spectrum, DirectTV, and Fubo. Outside of the Canes’ footprint the game will be on NHL Network.
Streaming Video: Hurricanes Hockey Network on Prime Video in the Hurricanes Footprint. Outside unfortunately the game is on NHL Network, so ESPN Ultimate/Plus will not have the stream.
Radio: The pregame Storm Watch with Adam Gold on 99.9 The Fan starts at 12:30 PM, At 1 PM radio (consisting of 99.9, 730 The Game in Charlotte, ESPN New Bern 107.5/1490, and ESPN Greenville 107.5/1570) will pick up the Mike Maniscalco and Tripp Tracy TV simulcast.
Lines: (Per DraftKings) Hurricanes -278, -1.5 (-105) /Jets +225, +1.5 (-115). O/U 6.5 +110/-130
