Morning Rant

Tonight's the last night of the Penguins Preseason.
Last night was the Canes' last preseason game.
Let's hope the Penguins have a better night than the Canes did.


To be honest, there wasn't anything wrong with the Canes game; they lost 1-2 in OT to the Predators. The only upsetting part was that there was potential to do better and they didn't. Nashville played a strong game and it should be noted that the Canes switched their lines sometime between practice and game time.  We're still left wondering what Maurice was thinking; if they were going to switch the lines, why the hell weren't they working on them in practice? 


Another point of contention for us is who was skating on what line.  Canes have failed to succeed on special teams all preseason (Only one PP goal comes to mind at the moment, need to recheck stats) so naturally its a good idea to play one of those lines for a while (Staal-Skinner-Ruutu).  Maybe he was just trying to judge chemistry & see if it really works for a special team? But all we know is the line had chemistry, but NOTHING happened.  Skinner played sloppy- 1 shot and 4 penalty minutes later his linemates still weren't producing either; Staal only had 4 shots and stats show Ruutu wasn't playing (citing @Canes_gameday for line info).  Pretty dismal product when you have your 2 top forwards on the same line.  Maybe the lack of preparation and upheaval of line changes messed them up? Who knows? 


Here's to hoping Paul Maurice learns from his mistakes and we don't see too many random switches in the future.