In many ways, the Carolina Hurricanes had a fitting end to their 2011-12 home schedule with a 2-1 shootout win over the Montreal Canadiens. It was the first shootout victory in seven tries for the Canes this season. Cam Ward stopped all three shooters and added 30 more saves in regulation and overtime to record his 30th victory of the season and first-star honors. Eric Staal scored the deciding shootout goal. \u201cIt was a great crowd. Our fans are great. Our fans support us regardless,\u201d Staal said. \u201cThey stuck with us, and things got better in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward\u2019s 30th victory marks the fifth time the goaltender has reached that marker in his seven-year career. (He was the back-up and injured the other two seasons.) Ward made two phenomenal saves in the second period to keep the game tied 1-1. The first was a diving blocker save on David Desharnais. The second was a shorthanded sprawling pad save on Tomas Plekanec. \u201cIt only seemed fitting to go into the shootout and give ourselves a chance to finally win one,\u201d he said. \u201cI think everybody in here is still disappointed that we\u2019re not making the playoffs, but it is important that you finish the season strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitting was a word thrown around a lot in the locker room after the game. Head coach Kirk Muller used it to describe Staal scoring the lone goal in the shootout to finally give the Canes a victory in that department. \u201cI knew that\u2019d be the first question,\u201d Muller said about the shootout. \u201cEveryone asks me about using Staalsy, and I just thought it was fitting with the way he played the second half, it was great to see him be the final shooter and score the final goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get to the shootout, the Hurricanes had to work their way through some man-disadvantages, including a 5-on-3 and 4-on-3. As sticks went between legs, tripping was the call-du-jour, but as was the case all night, the Canes stood tall. Montreal went 0-for-6 on the power play, perhaps proving to be the difference; the Canes\u2019 lone goal in regulation came on the power play, as Chad LaRose stuffed in loose puck in the crease for his 19th goal of the season, tying a career-high.<\/p>\n
Though the Hurricanes will not be in the playoffs this year, tonight \u2013 really, since the start of this calendar year \u2013 provides hope heading into next season. \u201cAs players and fans, you want to be in the playoffs,\u201d Staal said. \u201cI like to think we\u2019re going in the right direction as a group.<\/p>\n
The Canes will wrap up the 2011-12 campaign on Saturday in Florida. Though they won\u2019t be able to knock the Panthers out of postseason contention (They qualified tonight by way of Buffalo losing.), they might have an opportunity to knock them down to 8th place, pending what Washington does against New York that same night. In any case, they\u2019re still playing for pride and a three-game winning streak heading into the summer. \u201cYou want to keep heading in that direction,\u201d Ward said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to take your foot off the gas just because you aren\u2019t making the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In many ways, the Carolina Hurricanes had a fitting end to their 2011-12 home schedule with a 2-1 shootout win over the Montreal Canadiens. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canes","category-featured-stories","category-uncategorized","wpcat-89-id","wpcat-79-id","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3690,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions\/3690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}