Hurricanes’ captain calls out team after loss to Flyers: ‘It’s got to start soon’

When the doors to the dressing room opened, Jordan Staal was at his locker, waiting. He had something to say and he was ready to say it.

The captain has had enough.

Enough of the inconsistency. Enough of the failure to play the game that has made the Carolina Hurricanes so successful over the past five years on a regular basis. Enough.

After a 3-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers that saw the Hurricanes generate a ton of chances they didn’t finish and an equal number of breakdowns the Flyers did convert, Staal said it’s time for the Hurricanes — 9-7-0 to start the season after losing for the first time at home — to get their act together and get back to being, for lack of a better word, themselves.

“As a group, it just doesn’t look like we’ve completely bought in to how we want to do things, and it’s going to look like that,” Staal said. “It’s going to be a .500 club that wins some games and loses some games and kind of ho-hum. It’s getting a little frustrating. We’re going to need to have everyone. I have to be better, our line’s got to be better, contributions from everyone. It’s got to start soon.”

That was a sentiment Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour could only echo.

“He knows,” Brind’Amour said. “He’s the one that’s put this in place for a long time. It’s not enough. It’s not consistent enough. It’s hard enough to win anyway and it kind of makes it harder on ourselves. Just getting off a little, trying to be too cute here and there.”

The Hurricanes came out flat Wednesday, gave up a goal 50 seconds in and played from behind the rest of the night, the opposite of Saturday’s 4-0 thumping of the Lightning in Tampa — sloppy and disjointed, very out of character. So was a toothless power play that had converted in six of the previous seven games and all but four on the season.

The Hurricanes have run hot and cold all season, starting out without Andrei Svechnikov, missing Brett Pesce for an extended period, and now Frederik Andersen. But it goes way beyond injuries. It’s a matter of identity. The Hurricanes have worked hard to build one under Brind’Amour, under the leadership of first Justin Williams and then Staal in the dressing room, but it doesn’t come easy.

“The effort’s not terrible,” Staal said. “The effort of the way we want to play is what’s holding us back. The edge that you have in the NHL is you kind of know where the puck’s going because that’s the way we do things and it seems right now we’re just not really sure what’s going to happen. It starts to look like that sloppy stuff you see in the neutral zone when the puck’s bouncing around and guys are swirling around and looping around. It’s a less direct game than the Hurricanes know and love and I’m sure the fans love to watch. Tonight they didn’t look like they really love that game and I don’t blame them.

“It’s one or the other. When you have an expectation and you see it done and done well, then you expect it again, obviously. That’s our standard and it’s just like hit or miss.”

Some of this is unavoidably the difference between fighting for your playoff life every single night, as the Hurricanes so often have in the past, and knowing you’re almost certainly going to be there at the end. The difference between playing meaningful games in October and November and knowing the truly meaningful games are still months away.

The phrase “motivational dead zone” comes to mind again, just as it did at the end of last regular season when the Hurricanes stumbled to the finish, their playoff spot assured. While fans panicked, the Hurricanes were ready for a tough first-round series against the New York Islanders and dispatched the New Jersey Devils with relative ease before losing four straight one-goal games to the Florida Panthers.

But there’s a difference between taking a mental break and losing that edge entirely, and the Hurricanes’ erratic start to the season has reached the point where Staal is clearly concerned about the latter. Goaltending has been an issue at times, even when Andersen was healthy — while Pyotr Kochetkov might have liked the Flyers’ first goal back, as nasty a shot as it was, he was all but helpless on the next two — but the concerns run far deeper than that.

The Hurricanes’ direct, pressuring style requires maximum commitment. Cutting corners, playing sideways instead of forward, making stupid fancy plays instead of smart simple ones — any or all of that creates giant seams that even inferior teams can rip through. When done right, they’ll pile up shot after shot while suffocating opponents, and it’s merely a question of whether they can finish enough of the plethora of chances they create.

“I give them a lot of credit for sticking to their game plan,” Brind’Amour said. “That’s something we have to do a little more, just stick to what we do. We had a ton of opportunities to shoot. We’re trying to be too cute, looking for a guy on the backside who’s covered. … There’s some things we’re doing really well. I think the word is we’ve just got to do it a little more consistently.”

It’s less about effort than it is intention. That’s what’s missing.

“We played our hardest,” Svechnikov said. “Trust me.”

Staal clearly sensed it was time to take a public stand, to send a message to his teammates as much as the fans. Brind’Amour also seemed ready to take action he had so far avoided, although he’s already tinkered with his lines more in the past two weeks than most of his coaching career to date.

“We know exactly what’s going on,” Brind’Amour said. “It’s frustrating, but it’s got to stop. That’s going to be on me pretty soon to start shaking things up if we continue to do that. We’re too good to be inconsistent. That’s our calling card.”

Staal knew. Brind’Amour knows. The captain and the coach can both sense it. It’s deep enough in the season that there are no excuses now.

It’s time for the Hurricanes to get back to being the Hurricanes, before it’s too late.

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