Post #100: Round 1 Preview, Carolina vs. Montreal

The pundits, experts, and bloggers have all spoken. The Montreal Canadiens, according to them all, are going to be eliminated, quite handily they might add, by the Carolina Hurricanes in their first-round Stanley Cup playoffs series. Even Maggie the Monkey concurs. The Habs, my friends, have got everyone just where they want them.

Sure, Carolina has a speedy, explosive team. Sure, they have pretty good goaltending in Martin Gerber and Cam Ward. And sure, they finished 2nd in the Eastern Conference with 112 points. But those numbers don't reveal the full picture.

Although they scored 286 goals this season, the Hurricanes also hold the notorious record of having allowed the most goals against of any of the 16 playoff teams this year. That number doesn't look so good when you're facing the NHL's fifth-best power play, which belongs none other than to Carolina's current opponents, the Canadiens. It's especially disheartening when you realize that the Hurricanes' penalty kill is only 19th-best in the 30-team league. The 'Canes defense corps may be big and strong, but they're all of a relatively lower calibre than what a potential Cup contender should want to have. In this new, penalty-laden NHL, that doesn't help settle the playoff butterflies.

Then, there's the matter of the Hurricanes outscoring the Canadiens 25-9 this year. Let us remind you that three of the four games between the two teams were started by José Theodore, and he only finished one of them. Theodore gave up 4, 5, and 5 goals against the Hurricanes - 14 of the 25 goals they scored. David Aebischer started the fourth game, which just so happened to be his Canadiens debut. If you look at all the goaltender movement around the league this year, you can tell that a goalie's debut with his new team is not a true measure of his abilities.

The important point, though, is that the Hurricanes have yet to face Cristobal Huet as a starter, and that means that Carolina hasn't faced the Canadiens that made a remarkable push into the playoffs. They also haven't faced an Alex Kovalev who always turns up his game a notch in the postseason, especially when he gets frustrated answering questions about why people think his team is going to lose.

This series is going to be a fast-paced, high flying set of games, and boy, it's going to be close. But all those people who picked the Hurricanes to tear apart the Canadiens are forgetting that Carolina is facing a much different Montreal team than it thinks. These Habs know how to throw a wedge in a top team's Cup dreams; just ask Mike O'Connell.

Canadiens in 7.