What’s a shutout between friends? Antti Raanta’s third of the season meant the most
As the time wound down on Antti Raanta’s third shutout of the season, he wasn’t thinking about the celebration to come, when his Carolina Hurricanes teammates would pile upon him at the end of their Storm Surge.
He was happier for his two visiting Finnish friends, who were far more unsettled before Friday’s game than Raanta ever is.
“They’ve been nervous because they’ve been living in my house,” Raanta said. “They try to stay away from me on the game days, but obviously it was nice to get a win for them also.”
Friday’s 4-0 win over the Ottawa Senators might not have been the most demanding shutout of Raanta’s career but it was certainly one of the weirdest. The Hurricanes were only up 2-0 despite dominating the first period — Raanta saw only one shot in the first 10 minutes — then went on a herky-jerky special-teams roller-coaster with penalty after penalty.
By the end of it, Raanta had two pucks slide across the crease between him and the goal line and go out the other side, and the Senators dinged each post on either side of him. As Tom Barrasso used to say, “Now I have to stop the ones going wide?”
But when Brady Tkachuk had a point-blank power-play look midway through the third, Raanta stood tall and took it right in the chest, perhaps the best of his 32 saves.
“Raants was really good and kept us in there and we got the two points and we’ll move on,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
They’ve been doing that — taking the two points and moving on — a lot lately. The Hurricanes have now won five straight by an aggregate 21-6 score — one of those, you may have heard, was played outside — and 12 of their past 13. Raanta hasn’t lost in regulation since November, winning 11 of his past 12 starts.
And when a goalie’s on a heater like that, nobody wants to be the guy who gets in the way. Or in this case, guys.
Raanta’s childhood friends Ville and Pekka came over for the Stadium Series game, missing a connection in New York the night before and showing up just in time to get stuck in traffic that afternoon. They were cashing in a hole-in-one jackpot Ville won at Raanta’s golf tournament — a trip to the States to see an NHL game — back in the summer of 2020, while Raanta was busy in the Edmonton playoff bubble with the Arizona Coyotes.
They came to town last year when Raanta’s wife surprised him by bringing several of his friends over — “I got back from Buffalo at 1 a.m. and four guys are sitting in my living room,” Raanta said, “and I was like, this is not fun” — but this was the official fulfillment of the COVID-delayed prize trip.
After the outdoors game they went bowling and played golf and enjoyed the Hurricanes’ Sunday-Monday extended weekend off, and they had no skin in the game when Frederik Andersen was in net outdoors against the Capitals or indoors against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday. On Friday night, when he got the start, Raanta said the visiting Finns suddenly felt the walls closing in, which made the way things ended all the better.
“It’s always nice to have them here,” Raanta said. “I think they’re more nervous about the game when I’m playing than myself. It was kind of nice to get a shutout in front of those guys. Maybe they can relax now a little bit. They don’t have to drink so many beers before the game.”
Ville and Pekka are headed back to Finland on Monday, after Saturday’s home game against the Anaheim Ducks, but between the Stadium Series, the weather and their relieved host’s Friday shutout, they certainly got good value for their trip.
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This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 10:53 PM with the headline "What’s a shutout between friends? Antti Raanta’s third of the season meant the most."
