Raleigh News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/hurricanes/
May 27, 2009
RALEIGH - Bill Cowher chose to ally himself with the Carolina Hurricanes over the Pittsburgh Penguins, and that's one victory the Hurricanes can claim this series.
Cowher -- whose roots in Pennsylvania and the Triangle left him to choose between divided loyalties -- was the official "Siren Sounder" before Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday, and he will be the last to crank the siren for some months now.
Eric Staal's play for the Hurricanes was worthy of a future captain. - STAFF PHOTO BY CHRIS SEWARD
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin will take their act to the Stanley Cup finals after sweeping the Hurricanes out of the playoffs 4-1 Tuesday, although the rest of the Penguins, it should be said, weren't too bad either.
The Hurricanes started brightly, with Eric Staal scoring 96 seconds into the game, and waited for that next break, the break that always seemed to find them in the first two rounds.
"It never came," Hurricanes coach Paul Maurice said.
Instead, a Maxime Talbot shot deflected off Anton Babchuk's stick and fluttered just over Cam Ward's outstretched glove to make it 2-1 late in the first period, and the Canes never recovered.
So the sweep leaves a sour taste, particularly with CraigAdams putting it away, but it can't dull the luster of a postseason that does the Canes credit.
Even making the playoffs was a remarkable achievement for a team that played so poorly in the first two months of the season it got a Stanley Cup-winning coach fired and was left for dead in January. The Hurricanes can't see that right now, but they will.
"That's going to take some time," Staal said. "This hurts. It doesn't feel good, especiallybeing swept in the third round. That's never nice. It just doesn't feel nice right now."
Now, there are difficult decisions to make. Some, like the contract negotiations involving Erik Cole and Jussi Jokinen, are far more complex than they were two months ago. With $40 million allocated to 15 players, the Hurricanes have few options.
Going into the playoffs, it looked like the Hurricanes would try to re-sign Cole, Tuomo Ruutu and Babchuk and allow Chad LaRose and Dennis Seidenberg to leave.
Now, no one would hold it against the Hurricanes if they decided the money pigeonholed for Cole, who has now gone 31 playoff games without a goal, was better spent keepingLaRose and Jokinen. (Ruuturemains a no-brainer.)
Deciding what to do about a player after a poor postseason is better than no postseason at all.
And then there's the issue of who coaches this team next season, Maurice or Ron Francis.
The past two years, the Canes never gave themselves a chance to make this stand. Their inability to get their act together in 2007 and inability to close the deal in 2008 left those seasons unfinished. This year, even though it ended in a sweep, the Canes put up a fight.
They fought their way up the standings not just to make the playoffs, but to win a pair of Game 7s on the road and make it to the conference finals for the third time in seven seasons, one of only three teams able to make that claim.
The Canes had neither the energy nor the emotion to keep up with the Penguins, although they were closer than the aggregate 20-9 score would indicate.
"I don't think we had a lot left in the tank, to be honest with you," Maurice said. "We had gone to the well a lot of times. We'd spent a lot to get here and earned the right to be here."
They were swept by the Penguins, and that is what everyone will remember. There aren't a whole lot of gray areas in the playoffs. One team advances, another does not, and theneveryone shakes hands.
It will be a while before the sting of those handshakes wears off, but when it does, the Hurricanes will be able to look back and say they gave everything they had. If in the end it wasn't enough, there was no shame in that.
luke.decock@newsobserver.com, 919-829-8947 or blogs.newsobserver.com/decock
No comments:
Post a Comment