Hurricanes intend to ‘fix it’ during home-opening weekend

Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network
Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network
Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network

RALEIGH, N.C. – Carolina Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters has viewed the blueprint, pulled out his tools, and intends to present a remodeled version of his team when it opens play at home this weekend.

“Can’t wait,” Peters said of the Hurricanes taking to the ice at PNC Arena in front of their fans for the first time this regular season.

“It’s huge for this team, especially with how young we are. When you’re at home, you can try to help those guys a bit more with favorable match-ups and zone starts. We’ll definitely be doin’ that for the next two nights.”

Following Tuesday’s 4-2 loss in Detroit, Carolina now focuses on posting wins over Metropolitan Division opponents, the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers, on Friday and Sunday, respectively.

Peters’ goal is to piece together more productive combinations of lines to not only score goals, but prevent the other side from tallying more than his team.

With a current 1-3-2 record, the Hurricanes have allowed a total of 24 goals, four per game, while scoring three per game.

The math is simple.

The reason as to why this has happened to a team led by a coach who prides himself on sound defensive principles couldn’t be answered in any detail.

“No; we’ll fix it though,” Peters said promptly when asked the question following Thursday’s practice.

One significant change fans should expect is a reset of the defensive pairings Carolina started the season with.

“We’ll fix that too,” the coach continued while assessing the team’s offensive play.

“We’re scoring, but we’re reckless in order to score. I wanna tighten up our game. Last year we had an identity as a team. I really liked the identity we forged. It took us a while to get there. Unfortunately, this year, it’s taken us longer to get there. We haven’t got there yet. You’ll know when it’s clickin’. Now, it’s not clickin’ for 60 minutes, we’re well aware of that, and lookin’ to fix those problems.”

At this early point in the season, both Peters and the team’s pride is self-described as “wounded”.

“So let’s fix it. We will fix it.”