Given a chance to regroup, Hurricanes found their game in overtime, and just in time
It took a shot from a good distance below the goal line off the back of Ilya Sorokin’s melon just to get the Carolina Hurricanes to overtime, which is exactly the kind of night it had been. Just as they had after a bloodthirsty end to the first period, the Hurricanes used the third intermission to regroup.
Their path to overtime had been anything but smooth, outplayed by the New York Islanders for big chunks of the game, a two-goal lead squandered, a near-constant flow of players going to the dressing room for repairs. But given that extra time to consider their situation, they used it to rediscover everything that had made them successful over the course of the season.
That their most reliable group ended up winning the game — Jordan Staal with a cross-ice pass to Jesper Fast, who picked the far top corner from the right circle with the kind of shot that makes you wonder how he doesn’t score 40 every year — made it a fitting 4-3 finish to a brief overtime that saw the Hurricanes play the way they’re supposed to play on a night when they struggled to get there.
Rod Brind’Amour’s message to the team after 60 minutes was as simple as it was effective: “‘Listen, we can start over here’ It didn’t really matter how we got there if we can just find a semblance of the way we want to play, and I thought we did that. It was a reset.”
So the Hurricanes head north with a 2-0 lead on the Islanders, bruised and battered and now missing Teuvo Teravainen with surgery on a broken left hand scheduled Thursday, having proven they can win with their power play when stymied five-on-five, without their power play even when it is given chance after chance and in circumstances that are, even at home, less than ideal.
“Credit to them, they pushed back when they were down,” Hurricanes defenseman Jalen Chatfield said. “But the same with us. We pushed right back. And we came out on top.”
Two of the Hurricanes’ four goals were complete flukes. The Other Sebastian Aho scored into his own net, a one-hopper past Sorokin after he swiped at a puck in midair — Stefan Noesen got credit, remaining red hot, as did the, ahem, 1-for-6 Carolina power play — and Jaccob Slavin caught Sorokin peeking and used the back of his head like a backboard to make it 3-3.
But Fast’s winner was a beauty, utterly unstoppable, and Brent Burns picked up assists on the last two goals but not the first despite making it happen. After a long Carolina possession in the Islanders’ zone, the Hurricanes defenseman came barreling toward Ryan Pulock as the Islanders defenseman came from behind the net with the puck and made a business decision. Burns retrieved the puck, danced all the way back out to the blue line and started a play that ended with Slavin banking off Paul Stastny’s stick in front.
That’s the kind of smoothness everyone expects from the Hurricanes, who routinely batter their opponents with shot after shot after shot, winning the analytic battle regardless of what happens on the scoreboard. But they lost that battle Wednesday, and badly, and nevertheless still found a way to win the war.
“Sometimes you have to find a crazy way to win these games, and that’s what we did tonight,” Hurricanes center Jesperi Kotkaniemi said. “I’m sure it wasn’t our best performance but that’s how it works.”
And it felt like war at times. On a night the Islanders were better than the Hurricanes between the whistles, they still played like they could only win the oldest-school way.
Whether it was an on-tilt Matt Martin running Staal from behind, Pageau breaking Teravainen’s hand with a two-handed slash or Cal Clutterbuck narrowly missing The Real Sebastian Aho’s head, the Islanders seem intent on trying to even the playing surface by removing as many Hurricanes from it as possible.
The crazy thing is they didn’t really need to play that way. They were the better team for big chunks of the game, coming back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2 late, but the Hurricanes still found a way to win.
“People keep thinking we’re supposed to dominate the game,” Brind’Amour said. “I don’t understand this. They’re a good team. They had us on the ropes, and my guys came back and said ‘enough.’ They gave it back. That’s how it’s going to go.”
Whatever happened before overtime, and it was a lot, the Hurricanes played like themselves in overtime. They said enough. And it was enough.
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This story was originally published April 19, 2023 at 11:48 PM with the headline "Given a chance to regroup, Hurricanes found their game in overtime, and just in time."
