Eric Engels

They lost game four against Buffalo going one for seven on the power play.

They lost by a goal.

So like I said, it's not like they're playing badly in this building.

And the fans have been unbelievable.

Whether they're winning or losing at any point, they're just so loud and so involved and so intense and

I think the Canadians themselves have talked about how they want to win so badly for the love they're receiving from their fans that maybe that blurs the simplicity of their game a little, but I think they've had a chance to talk about it and deal with it.

Their last game here was by far their worst of the entire season.

An 8-3 loss to Buffalo in Game 6 with a chance to eliminate them from a 3-1.

I think they just got a little too excited.

They smelled a little vulnerability in the Sabres, and they tried to push it and

got too aggressive against a team like Buffalo that's not the most defensive team, I think if they had just waited it out a little, they would have gotten a lot of opportunities with a frustrated Sabres team.

But that didn't happen, and they lost the way they did, and they said, that can't be our last game at home, and they guaranteed that it wouldn't be, so they're back.

On or off their game, you have to meet their first wave of pressure, and you can't get stubborn about making plays in your own zone to do it.

Now, the Canadians were able to do that quite a bit in game one.

They were able to do it less so in game two, but they still exited their zone 75% of the time and controlled the puck.

Where the disconnect kind of happened is in the neutral zone, where I don't know if you saw the clip of Rod Brindamore saying, we worked on one thing in particular, but I won't tell you what it is.

It was his defenseman backing up a little bit once that first wave of pressure was beat.

And they weren't allowing the Canadians to get behind them as often as they did in game one.

And so the answer is to get out of your zone quicker and be able to apply more pressure through the neutral zone so you can establish defensive zone presence.

That's the key to beating Carolina.