Banged-Up Hurricanes Look to Put Away Oilers

Gathered in a semicircle in front of goaltender Jussi Markkanen, the Edmonton Oilers passed the puck back and forth and lured him from post to post before taking a shot. The stakes were high: those who scored got an early dismissal from Friday’s practice, while those who were stymied by Markkanen had to do a set of sprints from red line to blue line and back.

Few players were spared the extra exercise. Shawn Horcoff, a rare exception, yelled “Gretzky!” in self-praise and raised his stick in triumph as he glided off.

While Markkanen and his teammates seem to grow stronger and more assertive each day, the Carolina Hurricanes seem to be stalling. After squandering a chance to claim the Stanley Cup at home, they’ll get a second opportunity tonight at Rexall Place -- but they’ll have to do it without center Doug Weight, who appeared to suffer a shoulder injury in Carolina’s 4-3 overtime loss in Game 5 on Wednesday.

Carolina defenseman Aaron Ward, injured twice Wednesday, practiced Friday and said he would play tonight.

Coach Peter Laviolette wouldn’t specify the nature of Weight’s injury or say if Weight would be available if the Oilers extended the finals to a seventh game, at Carolina on Monday. He acknowledged that Weight’s absence is “a tough loss for us. Doug is part of the reason we have gotten so far,” but said that the Hurricanes have previously withstood significant injuries, such as the broken neck that took forward Erik Cole out of the lineup in early March.

“You can’t replace Cole. We won’t be able to replace Doug Weight. He’s a valuable part of this team,” Laviolette said. “Somebody else is going to have to step up. We have got lots of centermen that can move around to any position. We played out of position so many times through the course of the year and tried different things and still always seemed to find success with it.”

One option for Laviolette is to bring in center Chad LaRose, who played limited roles in Games 1 and 3. He might also move Kevyn Adams, Matt Cullen or Josef Vasicek back from the wing to their natural center position. Hurricanes winger Ray Whitney said he anticipated seeing Cullen, who scored 25 goals this season while playing mostly center, in the middle on the third line tonight.

“We’ve prided ourselves all year long on the depth of our hockey club,” Whitney said. “We’ll miss Doug, obviously, but we have people who can step in and take the workload. We have enough wingers to fill the void.”

Cullen said the Hurricanes aren’t demoralized. “We’re pretty confident and pretty focused,” he said. “You get the bumps and bruises in the playoffs, and to be honest, we’ve been really fortunate to this point.

“This is a little bump in the road, but there’s a lot of guys in here who can get it done. We need one more win. That’s the only focus we have right now.”

The Hurricanes haven’t lost two in a row since their first two games of the playoffs, and Markkanen hasn’t won two in a row since December.

But Markkanen ignores such statistics. “It’s all about one game. It doesn’t matter what we did in the past,” he said. “If we can’t deliver the goods in the next game, there might not be another one.... We have been able to get our game level better all the time, and we’ve been our best when it really counts.”

It will count most tonight.