Hurricanes can’t afford to start series down 0-2 to Panthers

The Carolina Hurricanes could already find themselves in big trouble in their Eastern Conference Final matchup with the Florida Panthers. After dropping Game 1 on home ice and losing that advantage, the series could completely swing in the Panthers’ favour if they go back home up 2-0, and the Hurricanes will have their backs against the wall in a series where they were already considered the underdog.

Frank Seravalli talked about the stakes for the Hurricanes in Game 2 and how they need to stay on their game on Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: The Carolina Hurricanes are skating for their lives tonight. You go down two-cop to the defending Cup champs on home ice, and say good night Gracie, it’s over. I mean, that’s just fact of life. This Panthers team, they’ve got a killer instinct like few others that we’ve seen in recent NHL history, and so this is it for the Canes.

I don’t want to hear someone ever say again that the canes are 0-13 in Conference Final games. Stop with the nonsense, okay? Because there’s only four guys left from the 2019 team. If you want to say that they’re 0-5 against the Panthers in the Conference Finals in the last three seasons, by all means, fill your boots. But nonetheless, they’re wearing part of that against this Panthers team, and they are hungry to erase it.

So, this is their opportunity. The big thing that stood out to me from Game 1: they got off their game. The Panthers took them off of their game and when that happened, they got themselves into a position where they tried to play a way that they’re not going to be successful in. Only the Florida Panthers in this series are capable of running a team into row three of the seats, and it’s not the Carolina Hurricanes.

So if you think that you’re going to go pound for pound and play tough against this team, focus on what you’re good at, which is defending, which is structure, which is getting pucks on net. And if you get away from that, you’re going to be in big, big trouble.

You can watch the full episode here…