RALEIGH -- Welcome to Opening Night, Tobacco Road style as the Florida Panthers open up against the homestanding Hartford/Carolina WhalerCanes.
It's raining outside, but nice and comfy inside the RBC Center, one of the few rinks with a scoreboard as bad as BankAtlantic Center -- although this place beats BAC for its meaningless banners. BAC may have Celine Dion, but N.C. State has papered the rafters with more plastic than you'd find on South Beach tonight.
Anyway, we're about to get going here as the Hurricanes are being introduced to the home crowd. No one has dived yet, so that's good. Fun to come up here and not have to talk about that during the morning skate. Believe it or not, but Pete DeBoer didn't bring that subject up.
The Booth-Weiss-Zednik lines starts tonight, with Bo and Allen starting on the blueline.
Updates throughout the game, but since it's on TV and radio, nothing LIVE! tonight.
But feel free to keep coming back. Should be fun.
PS: That picture is of the Carolina mascot, Stormy.
--As I've said before, love the personal TVs we have up here in the pressbox. Just watched some Family Guy, now the Seinfeld 'Chinese Restaurant' episode is on. Plus the baseball. Lot of choices. And hockey too!
GAME ON! GAME ON!
-- Happy Hockey Season everyone!
We still suck!!!!!!why????This is going to be a long year.
Posted by: bill baker | October 10, 2008 at 09:47 PM
i don't think we sucked at all.. it's gonna take a few games for this team to glue with the new system and bond together. we played well tonight.
unfortunately voukon looked really bad. there were about 3 shots that missed the net that should have been scored in the first where i saw him react after the shot already passed him.
i'm not worried about voukon that and the D will play better. i'm glad i saw pressure and some nice goals.
Posted by: josh | October 10, 2008 at 10:11 PM
The team as a whole played great. WHEN YOUR GOALIE GIVES UP 2 GOALS ON 4 SHOTS IN THE 1ST PERIOD AND SUBSEQUENTLY 5 GOALS ON 25 SHOTS THAT WILL KILL ANY GAME!!!!!! I don't know how people can say that our Defense played bad when they only gave up 25 shots!! VOKOUN IS WORTHLESS AND DOESN'T DESERVE TO PLAY WHEN YOU HAVE AN ALLSTAR CALIBER GOALIE LIKE CRAIG ANDERSON WAITING ON THE BENCH!!
Posted by: jon | October 11, 2008 at 08:26 AM
have to agree i would rotate the two and allow the better goalie to emerge...of course it should be Vokun but let him earn it
Posted by: jh | October 11, 2008 at 10:52 AM
Let me guess. You're from Hartford...
Posted by: Anne | October 11, 2008 at 11:50 AM
i think voukon is fine.. he had a bad game... most of the time he saves this teams but. this year should be different he just needs to be solid.
Posted by: josh | October 11, 2008 at 12:17 PM
Anne: Nope, Miami. I just always dug those Hartford unis. And the Brass Bonanza. And the Orange Julius in the Hartford Mall. Trust me, I'd much rather make three trips a year to Raleigh than two a year to Hartford. No offense Hartford.
Posted by: grichards | October 11, 2008 at 01:16 PM