The Eastern Conference standings, posted prominently in the Hurricanes' locker room, are a stark reminder.
As of this morning, the Canes are five points behind Florida and Buffalo, five points out of a playoff spot. Both the Panthers and Sabres scored shootout victories Friday night, picking up points, slipping further ahead.
"It's been the same thing for a couple of weeks now," defenseman Joe Corvo said today. "It's no big surprise.
"We need to get back on track and put some wins together and hope Florida loses its horseshoe eventually, or some of those teams. When you have teams like Toronto just handing away points in the third period, it makes it pretty difficult."
The Panthers trailed the Maple Leafs 4-1 in the third period earlier this week, only to rally for a 5-4 overtime victory.
"Games like that are hard to overlook, especially when you're racing against a team and then the other team, Toronto in particular, has these epic collapses in the third period," Corvo said. "It's pretty disheartening."
Florida then rolled into the RBC Center on Thursday and smacked the Canes 5-0.How do you explain a 5-0 loss in a game that had such added importance?
"We weren't ready to play, I guess," Corvo said. "Maybe it's the distance between games, in terms of the time changes and things like that."
"We were outshooting them but nothing went right in that game. What are you going to do?"
Keep going, obviously. After tonight's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets at the RBC Center, the Canes play at Buffalo on Sunday night.
"It's the same situation as two or three weeks ago," forward Sergei Samsonov said. "You've got four or five teams that are really close. The good thing is we're playing a couple of those teams up ahead and there's an opportunity there, that's for sure."
A Raleigh native, Chip has worked at the N&O since 1979 and is the Canes beat writer. He can be reached at
Comments
That is Terrible timing of comments by Corvo
Sat, 02/14/2009 - 16:02 — Caniac324Florida clearly came in to the RBC Center and embarrased Corvo and the Canes. Now he wants to blame Toronto for their situation? Maybe the real problem is starting to show up, lack of personal responsibility. What was Corvo, -4 personally responsible for the first 2 goals! maybe he should talk less and work harder to make sure he does his part to help the Canes win!
Come on Joe, it's tough to
Sat, 02/14/2009 - 15:08 — crazyjoedavolaCome on Joe, it's tough to complain about Toronto's "epic collapses" when you get beat up on your home ice 5-0 to the same team. At least Toronto made a game of it.
If you were able to get the job done yourself, you wouldn't need to worry about what Toronto is doing. If the Canes are waiting for other teams to do their dirty work for them, they might as well call it a season right now and save all of us a lot of time and money.