The Carolina Hurricanes return home on Tuesday night from a three-game road trip that saw them visit three other Sun Belt franchises.
The Canes went 1-1-1 in three games against the Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning, maintaining their edge atop the Metropolitan Division standings despite some bad injury news and concerning blown leads in the latter two games.
In the process of coughing up a 3-0 lead to the Panthers in Sunrise, the Hurricanes lost stars Jaccob Slavin and
Seth Jarvis to injuries. Playing without Slavin is nothing new to this year’s iteration of the club, as he’s made just five appearances to this point, but it’s disheartening nonetheless.
Jarvis, on the other hand, is having a season ripped straight out of the Final Destination series. There was the concern over a long-term injury when he took a hard shot to the foot/lower leg, the near-miss when he took a high stick directly to the eye, and now he’s crashed full speed into a goalpost after a blatant uncalled trip, suffering what seems to be a rib injury.
It’s a testament to the star winger that despite the prior two ailments, he’s scoring at the best pace of his career and gutting it out to help both Carolina and his chances at making Team Canada at the Winter Olympics. I’m not going to wade too far into the politics of Hockey Canada’s roster decisions, but they’d be fools not to take him to Milan— especially given some of the other names reportedly under consideration.
As for Tuesday night, it will be interesting to see how, if at all, the Canes respond to the plays from Friday night that took out two of their very best.
The Panthers continue to be without their two best forwards in Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov, but they’re still hanging around the playoff race anyway. Brad Marchand and Sam Reinhart lead the team with 40 and 35 points, respectively.
Sergei Bobrovsky’s numbers aren’t stellar, but the seemingly ageless Russian netminder is winning Florida more games than he’s losing them.
With Jarvis out, this figures to be another crucial stretch for Jackson Blake, slated to get another chance on the top line with Nikolaj Ehlers and Sebastian Aho. The 22-year-old has 22 points in 35 games, including four in his past four after a four-game stretch in which he was blanked.
This is the last game before the holiday freeze, and after the way the last two losses went down, you can bet the Canes will be extra motivated to set a better mood heading into the break.
Here’s how to check out the action:
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Lenovo Center – Raleigh, NC
TV: FanDuel Sports Network with Mike Maniscalco, play-by-play; Tripp Tracy, color analyst; Shane Willis, analyst; Hannah Yates, rinkside.
Radio: 99.9 The Fan FM
Line: ML: CAR -154; PL: CAR -1.5 +158
