Tweetmail No. 203: Culture, Young Centers & Victory Celebration

Hello and welcome to Tweetmail, 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.

Obviously, the Hurricanes are a bit different stylistically on the ice. They're more aggressive and more pressing on offense, more willing to take chances when the opportunity is there.
The result is fun hockey, both for the players to play and the fans to watch.
"I just like the aggressiveness of our team. We're utilizing our speed. We're a fast team, and we're actually playing that way, too. We're being aggressive and going after teams, creating turnovers. We've given up a few maybe more than in previous years, but when it comes down to the end of the game, we feel like we should be on top," Jordan Staal said after Tuesday's victory. "It's been fun to play that way."
"We want to play that way offensively. That's the way we have to play. We have good talent, and we have to use it to our advantage," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "Now we have to get better at the other end. I think there's a lot of room for improvement, which is a positive that we're still finding ways to get wins."
In playing such a fast, aggressive, offensively-minded system, defensive breakdowns are going to and have happened. Icing such a young lineup has compounded some of these issues.
It's important, then, to have a coaching staff that is going to be understanding of these growing pains. And in my opinion, that's been the biggest cultural shift in coaching - having a head coach that isn't going to punish his players for erring on the side of trying to make a play.
"Roddy has been preaching, especially to us young guys, that if we make a mistake, try to rebound the next shift," said Warren Foegele, who is tied for the team lead in goals with three in four games.
"I was frustrated because we didn't come out the way we talked about coming out, but then happy with the way things were going but then back, oh, what are we doing? How can we make those mistakes?" Brind'Amour described his wave of emotions during Sunday's wild 8-5 win over New York. "But I keep reminding myself that we have a young group, and they're going to make mistakes. Try not to harp on those."
That approach has fostered a positive environment on the room and on the ice and, I think, has directly impacted results early in the season.

Ah, the annual State Fair Road Trip. This year's trip isn't too taxing at all. In fact, the Canes will be out of town for just three games over a four-day span. Typically, this road trip would take the team way out west over the course of a week-and-a-half or so. It would be a grueling, early-season test. This year? Not so much, at least in terms of distance traveled and time spent away.
It is, however, a good measuring stick for the Hurricanes, who have started the season 3-0-1. Now, they'll travel into tough buildings to face three playoff teams from a season ago: Minnesota, Winnipeg and Tampa Bay. It's going to be a worthy challenge for a young team that has come out of the gates hot.
So, the keys. I'd like to see this team stay aggressive. That's been the Canes' calling card early on, for better (see: wins, goals for) and for worse (see: goals against). At the same time, the Canes are going to have to tighten up defensively, especially against these opponents, who are all dangerous offensively. Finally, as much as we'd all love the team to go 81-0-1 or some variant of that, a regulation loss is likely to occur at some point. How the Canes respond to that will be important, but so far what we've seen is an incredibly resilient group. Time to put it to the test on the road against some good teams.
Tweet from @vozdeckym: Where do you see Necas end up? Obviously first few matches were not good from his side...
Martin Necas is going to be just fine this season. He came in with high expectations, and it's been a bit of a slow start - at least statistically - for the 19-year-old center, but that's no cause for concern. Take Sebastian Aho, for instance. It took him a month in both his rookie and sophomore campaigns to settle in and tick the goal column, so I'm not panicking yet.
In fact, what's an interesting situation for Brind'Amour and his coaching staff is this: You've got three forward lines that are jelling and buzzing right now. Necas, along with Brock McGinn and either Phil Di Giuseppe and Valentin Zykov, hasn't quite gotten there yet. So, do you tinker with that line in order to kickstart it? Or do you take a more laissez-faire approach and let it work itself out? So far, it's been the latter, and I think it's been the right thing to do. Clearly, the offense is motoring along just fine. At some point, you're going to want to get Necas and his wingers going, but not at the expense of everything else that is already working.
Speaking of …

Martin Necas. The teenage Czech center has probably been less of an impact in the first four games than we might have thought he'd be, but it's not going to remain that way. He's a young kid playing a difficult position in the best league in the world; it's OK if it takes a little time to adjust.
"It's a tough position to play. People don't understand that, and that's why you take for granted the guys who are good at it," Brind'Amour said. "They cover a lot of ground. They're in the play all the time. [Aho] has got to figure it out a little bit. Same with Marty. We've got some young centers here. It's a challenge."

\eyes emoji\
Check it out!
We've just added descriptions of all of our food offerings (both entrées and desserts) and images of each of the six shirts and posters featured this season in the Hurricanes Homegrown Series.
What food offering has you salivating? And what shirt or poster seems like a must-grab? (All of them is a fine, much acceptable answer.)

For reference, here's a video walk-through of the locker room as it appeared when camp began. There have been some additional art installations since - more on that to come from that in the near future.

What you see on the floor of the locker room is a red, logo-shaped carpet. It's covering the Hurricanes' logo, which is printed on the carpet underneath. The red carpet overlay is basically a way to protect against the whole don't-step-on-the-logo rule. When folks are moving around in the locker room, the red carpet goes down on top of the logo. Otherwise, it's stowed away, and the team logo is featured in the center of the locker room.

I don't think the Hurricanes' new victory celebration has been officially christened, though I'm partial to "storm surge" or the "eye wall" myself. On Tuesday, as the team dashed down the ice, John Forslund said on the broadcast, "Here they come. The surge is on."

Maybe "storm surge" is the leader in the clubhouse. I can get behind that. In any case, it's a lot of fun!
\\*
Join me next week for more questions and more answers!
If you have a question you'd like answered or you have a suggestion for what the Canes' victory celebration should be called, you can find me on Twitter at
@MSmithCanes
or drop an email
here
.