{"id":656167,"date":"2026-05-21T09:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656167\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:23:14","slug":"hurricanes-turn-focus-to-canadiens-after-long-wait-for-east-final-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656167\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricanes turn focus to Canadiens after long wait for East Final opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"

What the Canadiens have going on is what the Hurricanes will be trying to stop, from their strong power play (25 percent) to star forwards in Nick Suzuki<\/a>, Cole Caufield<\/a> and Alex Newhook<\/a>\u00a0and defenseman Lane Hutson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they play a pretty good stretch game, similar to us,\u201d Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker<\/a> said. \u201cThey get the puck out pretty clean and they have high-skill guys who can make you pay. Going to try to limit their chances, keep them off the power play and stick to our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens defeated the Hurricanes three times during the regular season, but the playoffs can be a different beast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a great season, they\u2019re a great team. They\u2019re a high-pressure team, they\u2019re fast, they have a good goalie (Jakub Dobes<\/a>) and they have a good power play,\u201d Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cThey don\u2019t give you much time but they make it hard on you to get anywhere on the ice, get it moving forward. That\u2019s what good teams do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no reason why we wouldn\u2019t see them do as well as they have in the playoffs because the way they play is a playoff-grinding game and it showed those first two series against two good teams they beat. It\u2019s going to be a great challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hurricanes\u2019 other challenge, of course, is getting back up to the speed they were at when they finished off the Flyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a challenge to stay sharp and yet knowing we were going to have so much time, you don\u2019t want to give them too much because it\u2019s a mental drain, the playoffs,\u201d coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cAs you guys know covering it, it\u2019s just like every night you\u2019re like, \u2018Holy mackerel.\u2019 So to get away from it is good but you also don\u2019t want to get too far away from it because you get out of the wheel, so to speak. That\u2019s been the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hurricanes have had two long breaks since the playoffs began. They had six days off after sweeping the Ottawa Senators in the first round.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had two of those these playoffs, so it\u2019s been very interesting,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cHopefully the rest, the mental rest will pay off for us. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to be physically. We\u2019ve had some time to heal up but the pace, I\u2019m not sure how that\u2019s going to translate, but we\u2019ll find out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What the Canadiens have going on is what the Hurricanes will be trying to stop, from their strong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-656167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}