The New York Rangers (14-5-3, 4th Eastern conference) defeated the Carolina Hurricanes (8-15-4, 14th Eastern conference) Thursday night at RBC Center by the score of 5-3. In head coach Kirk Muller’s second game with the ‘Canes, Jiri Tlusty (5), Jeff Skinner (11) and Derek Joslin (1) accounted for the three goals.
After losing to the Ottawa Senators back in October and the Philadelphia Flyers in mid-November, the Hurricanes were hoping to pick up their first College Night victory of 2011. Although Muller liked the effort his team put in, Carolina could not defeat the Blue Shirts.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys, and if they can play through this and they can battle through this and there is a light at the end of the tunnel and they start growing – they are going to be better down the road,” Muller said. “They’ll be better next week and they’ll be better tomorrow.
“You don’t get to this level by being mentally weak,” Mueller added. “They are pro athletes, and they’ll find a way to dig out of this and when they do, they are going to feel good.”
Scoring twice in as many games for his new head coach, Skinner put the ‘Canes ahead with eight seconds remaining in the first period. The 19-year-old also took a hit from behind from the Rangers’ Brian Boyle late in the game, which initiated a fight between ‘Canes Anthony Stewart and Boyle.
“I don’t know what [the hit] looked like, so I can’t really say [if there should’ve been a penalty],” Skinner said.
If the left winger out of Markham, Ontario, Canada was attending State, he would just barely qualify to be a sophomore – and for as low as $15, college students the same age and older can see the all-star and the rest of the Hurricanes play against some of the best teams in the NHL.
Apart from enjoying the game, there are the ever-popular College Night t-shirts, which are given to the first 100 students who “check in” to the RBC Center on Facebook when signing into the booth outside of section 113.
“We know the work we have done on campus, promoting it has done a lot,” junior Nathaniel Davis, a College Night volunteer, said, “and basically word of mouth has been great, too. The biggest thing here is the t-shirts; people will do anything for t-shirts. If they see there is a t-shirt, they are going to come flying to the games.”
One of those games not initially on the six-game schedule is going to be on Dec. 23 against the Ottawa Senators. In addition to the game just before Christmas, the ‘Canes will also offer another option for college students staying home for the holidays.
“I just think that a lot of people that are from the area originally probably came to high school here and are coming back to visit their parents,” Davis said. “So they’ll want to come out and see because they won’t be here for these college nights if they are away at school.”
As for Thursday night, there was no shortage of Rangers fans that took advantage of the College Night offer. Lower bowl tickets could be purchased at $30, which is exactly what Penn State student Ian Carpenter did on vacation while visiting his girlfriend at Meredith.
“My dad’s a Rangers fan, so I just grew up with it,” Carpenter said. “It’s going to be a rough one for the ‘Canes tonight. We won 5-1 last game, so I think it is going to happen again.”
The Scranton, Pa. native ended up being right in his pre-game prediction as his Rangers gave a large contingent of New York fans a lot to cheer about.
The next regularly scheduled College Night game will also be against a team hailing from New York – the Islanders. The game is on Jan. 31 with puck drop slated for 7 p.m . Matt Horton, Hurricanes client relations representative, anticipates even more success as the program begins to grow throughout the community.
“College Night is something we would like to continue,” Horton said. “College Night has provided many benefits. A few of our interns have come from the N.C . State community and it gives us publicity to a large community. If N.C . State was a town or city it would be the seventeenth or eighteenth largest in the state of North Carolina.”
