ESPN Says the Injuries Are the Shock. Being First Anyway Isn’t.

ESPN dropped its power rankings Thursday with Carolina at number one, and the write-up called the team’s injury luck its biggest surprise of the young season. Staal for a month or two with a torn calf. Hall with an upper-body injury Brind’Amour won’t put a timeline on. Jarvis still on IR.

Fair enough. Three regulars in a week is a lot. But the part worth noticing is the part ESPN treated as a footnote: the Canes are first anyway, on a six-game winning streak, and nobody who watches this team should be surprised by that.

Go back through the streak. Jarvis was already out when it started. Staal was scratched before warmups in Philadelphia and the team won 4-1. Hall left in the second period against Washington and the team won 4-2. That’s not a team surviving injuries. That’s a team that didn’t flinch. Jankowski stepped into Staal’s spot and scored. Svechnikov put two in against the Caps, including the winner. The penalty kill didn’t blink.

This is the thing the rest of the league keeps misreading about Carolina. They see the cheap blue line and the roster with no $10 million forward and wrongly assume the team is one injury from trouble, because that’s how their own rosters work. When you pay $12 million for one guy, losing him is a crisis. When you pay $3 million for six guys who all know the system, losing one is a Tuesday.

The real test isn’t the next two weeks. It’s whether the team can keep doing this through November with Nadeau maybe in a top-nine spot and Staal’s minutes spread across three centers. I think it can, and here’s the reason nobody’s mentioning: Jarvis took off the no-contact sweater a week ago. He’s close. The best goal scorer on the roster is going to walk back into the lineup right around the time the Hall news settles, and suddenly the injury list is one guy with a calf.

ESPN has it backwards. The shock isn’t that a Cup winner got hurt. Every team gets hurt. The shock would be if any other roster in the league lost its captain, its playoff closer, and its leading goal scorer in the same two weeks and sat first in the standings with a six-game streak.

Carolina did. That’s not luck. That’s the point of how this team was built, and we’re watching it work in real time.

Saturday in Winnipeg. Go Canes.

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Mark Jankowski Has Six Goals in Six Games. That's Not About Jankowski.

Brady Tkachuk Scored Six Goals This Week. Remember when he asked to be a Hurricane?

Nadeau Isn’t a Fill-In. Don’t Treat Him Like One.

Hall Is a Playoff Player. Treat the Injury That Way.