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Trotz slams Hutton after loss: ‘That’s not good enough for this league’

barrytrotzap

James OBrien

From the Carolina Hurricanes’ perspective, Jeff Skinner’s game-winning goal was an example of resilience, as the young forward shook off a puck to the face. On the other hand, the Nashville Predators might see it as a disaster.

Predators head coach Barry Trotz didn’t sugarcoat how he felt about the goal that Carter Hutton allowed on Sunday, as the Tennessean’s Josh Cooper reports.

“You have to save those. That wasn’t much of a shot at all,” Trotz said. “That’s not good enough for this league. He wasn’t strong at all.”

Here’s the goal in question:

To be fair to Hutton, he only allowed one other tally on Sunday, as the Carolina Hurricanes won 2-1.

Hutton, 28, came into the 2013-14 season with exactly one game of NHL experience (when the Chicago Blackhawks sent out their replacements against the St. Louis Blues). He fell to 7-7-2 on the season with mediocre individual numbers (.902 save percentage and 3.01 GAA).

The loss and Trotz’s venting make it tough to ignore what Predators GM David Poile told the CBC’s Elliotte Friedman about life without Pekka Rinne last week:

“He’s like the Mastercard commercial, priceless,” Poile said. “We have two young goalies who have played well. Every night, you go through the situations [and ask yourself], ‘Would Pekka have stopped that?’ We don’t play the same without him.”

Would this be an awkward time to mention that Poile had a chance to sign Anton Khudobin, the undefeated Hurricanes backup who beat his Predators tonight, with Rinne’s offseason hip surgery in mind? Yeah, it might be.

Follow James O’Brien @cyclelikesedins