‘They brought their toys with them!’ The Hurricanes have time to kill in the bubble.
Even if there was anything about these NHL playoffs you could file under normal or routine, the task ahead of the Carolina Hurricanes truly is unprecedented, even by the increasingly curious standards of the past five months.
They had six days off between sweeping the New York Islanders and meeting the Boston Bruins in the conference finals last spring, but they spent that time at home, with their families, in their routine. Now, as they wait until — at least — Tuesday for the actual first round of the NHL playoffs after their three-game sweep of the New York Rangers, they’re as far from home as they could be, marooned and sequestered in the NHL’s Toronto bubble, for the sake of their safety, if not their sanity.
Before they crossed the border, the Hurricanes planned for something like this, packing their suitcases (and the equipment truck) full of diversions and entertainment, all “if necessary,” like the fifth game of a playoff series one team leads 3-0.
Turns out, they really, really needed them. On Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. And Monday. And maybe even Tuesday, too. It’s all very 2020 for the days to stretch out like this, sort of how it feels like March never really ended either.
“We’ve got a lot we’re going to do for the next week, outside of practicing and trying to stay sharp,” Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin said. “Board games, Catan, golf simulators, Spikeball. A little bit of everything, trying to stay sane in the bubble, I guess.”
(To quote Reg Dunlop: “They brought their (bleeping) toys with them!”)
There is a lot to do. The question is whether it’s enough. On their floor at the Royal York Hotel, the Hurricanes have a players’ lounge set up in a suite with poker chips, video game systems and multiple TVs, and they set up a ping-pong table on the landing outside the elevators. Downstairs, in the NHL’s player lounge, there are golf simulators and other games.
A shuttle bus ride away, players and staff have access to the NHL’s recreation facilities at BMO Field, the home of MLS’ Toronto FC, and a neighboring hotel. (The Hurricanes weren’t allowed to access those until Wednesday, after they advanced to the first round.) BMO field has all kinds of sporting equipment — football, baseball, soccer, bocce, cornhole — while Hotel X has tennis, squash and basketball courts, plastic ice for shooting practice and a rooftop pool.
There are also fitness facilities, outdoor dining and a concierge service that will deliver just about anything from outside the bubble inside it. All of which sounds great unless you’re stuck there. As the days drag on, the Hurricanes are planning a team Spikeball tournament; Jordan Martinook has already posted video of intense sessions of Settlers of Catan, a board game, to social media.
There will be some hockey, too, but there’s only so much of the day a practice can absorb. Other than Dougie Hamilton, who is expected to be ready at some point during the next round, maybe even for Game 1, there isn’t even anyone who really needs the recovery time — Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Thursday that beyond a few bumps and bruises, “overall we came out of it pretty good.”
They took Wednesday off and skated Thursday, but it’s going to be a tricky challenge for Brind’Amour over the next few days as he walks the very fine line between maintaining his team’s edge and grinding it off entirely.
“That’s the immediate question we all are wrestling with a little bit,” Brind’Amour said. “The focus here is we don’t want to lose the sharpness. At the same time, we’re not playing for a while. So really the mental side of things for me, for the guys, try to figure out how to keep them engaged. We’re not playing. That’s the challenge.
“We’ve got some ideas. But we’re limited too. There’s not things we can do to get away from it. That to me is the big challenge this week, how to stay sharp and at the same time mentally staying with it, because we’re not engaged right now. That’s the big trick this week.”
They can’t even spend that much time preparing for their opponent, because that still depends not only on the round-robin series between the four teams allowed to skip the qualifiers, but potentially also the result of the Pittsburgh-Montreal series, where a Canadiens win on Friday or Saturday would bump the Hurricanes up a notch.
If they remain the sixth seed, they’re likely to face Philadelphia or Washington. If they move to fifth, they would be likely to face Boston or Washington. If the Flyers win Thursday afternoon, no matter what happens with the Penguins and Canadiens, it will definitely be a rematch from 2019, just a matter of which one.
The layoff wasn’t the issue in that Bruins sweep; the Hurricanes actually played very well in Game 1, leading through two periods before their indiscipline proved costly, a theme throughout the series. Then Petr Mrazek struggled in Game 2 and everything fell apart, and quickly. That’s an easy parallel for the Hurricanes to dismiss. There are others they would prefer to embrace.
“We just took four months off and we were pretty sharp going into the Rangers series,” Slavin said. “There are still things we need to work on. I don’t think the long layoff will be the issue.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 11:55 AM with the headline "‘They brought their toys with them!’ The Hurricanes have time to kill in the bubble.."
