Tweetmail No. 186: Playoffs, Outtakes & Office Space

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Tweetmail is a weekly feature on CarolinaHurricanes.com in which I take your Twitter questions about the Carolina Hurricanes or other assorted topics and answer them in mailbag form. Hopefully the final product is insightful to some degree, and maybe we have some fun along the way.
Let's get to it.

So far, so good for the Charlotte Checkers in their first-round Calder Cup Playoff series against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. The Checkers take a 2-0 series lead on the road, where they'll need to win just one of the next three games to advance to the second round.
I was in Charlotte for Games 1 and 2, and what I saw was impressive. The Checkers are a skilled, quick bunch. They're well-coached. They're confident. They've got some swagger.
Though the Checkers won both games over the weekend, they've played with a lead for less than six minutes in over 120 minutes of hockey. What's impressive about that is the situation never seemed dire otherwise, and even down 2-0 in Game 1, there wasn't a sense of panic among the Checkers.
"We talked about just getting one. Get that first one and the next couple will come," Checkers head coach Mike Vellucci said after the game. "We never give up. We've always fought back, no matter what the score was. The guys don't give up. They compete and stay positive."
"It was a big goal, the first one," said Lucas Wallmark, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime of Game 1. "After that we played with more confidence."

In Game 2, the Checkers fought through being scored on in the first shift of the game. That, coming less than 24 hours after a dramatic, come-from-behind victory in overtime, could have taken the wind out of Charlotte's sails and shifted the momentum towards the Penguins. Rather, the Checkers settled in, tied the game before the period's end and scored the go-ahead goal late in the third before adding a pair of empty-netters.
Goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic has also looked sharp. In Game 1, a dump-in from the neutral zone took a nasty hop and beat him glove side to put the Penguins up 2-0. Nedeljkovic parked that and stopped everything he saw from then on. In Game 2, after the Pens scored just 22 seconds into the game, Nedeljkovic again shut it down from then on and finished with 27 saves.
"He was huge. Last night after that second one went in - that's a pretty bad bounce - he rebounded well. He was solid for the rest of the game," defenseman Haydn Fleury said after Game 2. "Just the way he can park a goal and leave it there - they scored one on the first shift tonight, and they don't get another one. He's been huge."
The team now heads to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton riding a nine-game winning streak. They peaked at the right time, and they've carried it into the playoffs. One more win and it's on to round 2.

I've given some thought to this excellent question all morning and have come up with a few "outtake" moments that are sharable enough.
We'll start with one that happened to me.
So, we're in Columbus in November. I can't remember if it was our first or second stop there, but in any case, I was wearing pants that I knew were on their last leg - no pun intended. They'd soon be retired, but I was going to wear them until I couldn't any longer. Turns out, that moment was in Columbus.
Upon returning to the hotel from the team's morning skate, I discovered a rip in the seat of the pants.
Flashback to 1999 and the second episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. In "Ripped Pants," our spongy, yellow protagonist
does just that
in front of a crowd of onlookers at Goo Lagoon. My situation wasn't as embarrassing because it didn't happen in such a public fashion, but it's all I could think of.
In any case, I still faced the conundrum of the ripped pants. Time was tight, and this was the only pair of slacks I packed. I had no choice but to wear them back to the rink that evening. The rip wasn't too big yet, but that could change with an overly-aggressive bend or squat or really any sudden, swift lower-body movement. I took it as easy as I could. Once at the rink, I sought out the assistance of the fine Hurricanes' equipment staff. Jorge Alves worked some double-sided tape magic, and the pants would get me back home, at which point they'd be properly laid to rest.
Though, while Alves was performing pants surgery, Cam Ward walked in the room bewildered at what was happening.
And that's The End of the time I ripped my pants in Columbus.
Here's another story.
The Canes were in Saskatoon in late September for a neutral-site preseason game. The team practiced at a rink nearby the SaskTel Centre, but this set-up necessitated the dress-at-the-arena-and-bus-to-the-practice-rink routine. Because I'm selfish and wanted to capture a funny video to share with the World Wide Web, I was hoping one of the guys would forget to take his skate guards off before hitting the ice. It happened to Kris Versteeg a few years back in New Jersey, and it's always good for a laugh.

Unfortunately for social media, every coach and player remembered to remove their skate guards in Saskatoon. If I remember correctly, Joakim Nordstrom came closest to leaving his on but discarded them at the last moment. Me lurking with my phone nearby probably gave it away. An outtake that wasn't quite an outtake. Oh well.
Two more outtakes that made it to social media but are worth resurfacing.
There was that one time assistant coach Steve Smith stiff-armed TV's Mike Maniscalco in a bench interview.

And here are the Swedes scrum lurking while sporting some sweet shades.

What about y'all - any good outtakes to share?

Nope. DMS 4 lyfe.
Really, the one thing that could take our office space, affectionately known as the Digital Media Suite (or DMS, for short) to the next level would be a window. And, since we're stationed in limbo between the first floor and arena level, I don't think that's going to happen.

Red! Blue's not bad either, especially Carolina Blue and Panther Blue.
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Join me next week for more questions and more answers!
If you have a question you'd like answered or you want to hear more outtakes from the season, you can find me on Twitter at
@MSmithCanes
or drop an email
here
.