from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer,

Take your pick. The Carolina Hurricanes are in their element — at home, in a Game 7 — or they’ve pushed their luck one step too far and the bill has come due.

Both are equally true in this moment. No one really knows. There’s only one way to find out.

What is also true, and unequivocal, is that this has been the strangest damn postseason in memory.

Maybe it’s always like this for the favored team in the playoffs, and it’s been so long since the Hurricanes truly faced the burden of expectations and weren’t just going around upsetting the natural order of things, breaking hearts in Montreal and Toronto and Montreal again, that we’ve all forgotten.

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