For one night, Hurricanes get the goaltending — and the win — they desperately needed
That’s it, exactly.
What the Carolina Hurricanes got from Pyotr Kochetkov in Ottawa on Tuesday is exactly what they need from him for another 40 games or so, right down to his shouting match with Brady Tkachuk.
All of that.
It wasn’t just that the Hurricanes finally got their first win of a disastrous six-game road trip, with one still to play in Detroit on Thursday; it was that Kochetkov finally played with the fire and aggression that made him successful in his season-saving emergency stint last fall. There was nothing he could do about the early goal, with an injured Jordan Martinook sprawled in his crease, but with every save he made, you could see the team in front of him start to play better.
Our memories shouldn’t be that short around here that we don’t remember the phenomenon of this team playing poorly in front of a goalie it doesn’t trust. That unwanted trip down memory lane has not only called into question the Hurricanes’ status as a Stanley Cup contender but even their chances of making the playoffs, long believed to be a fait accompli.
Tuesday night was exactly what the Hurricanes needed to stop their skid. It wasn’t just stopping the pucks an NHL goalie needs to stop, which both Kochetkov and Antti Raanta have struggled with since Frederik Andersen was shut down. Kochetkov was finally making the kind of saves where if the puck had gone in, everyone would say, “can’t blame him for that one.”
Whether it was flashing the glove or stacking the pads old-school style, Kochetkov was constantly moving toward the puck instead of away from it, making himself big instead of small, acting instead of reacting. He doesn’t always look composed or calm, but that’s the way Kochetkov has to play to be successful — the screw a turn too lose rather than a turn too tight.
That all came to a head on Tkachuk’s late penalty shot, errantly given when officials ruled Kochetkov threw his stick at the puck when he’d actually lost his grip on it in a way that was not helpful to him at all. As Tkachuk skated in, he looked down at the puck for a second, and Kochetkov took that opportunity to pounce, shooting out of the net and taking out the puck and Tkachuk’s legs with a sliding poke-check that sent Tkachuk wobbling into the end boards on one skate.
Tkachuk didn’t like it, and let Kochetkov know about it, and Kochetkov offered it right back until the two were separated, finally showing the fire that both gets him in trouble and unlocks his best play. Tkachuk should have known better than to take his eyes off Kochetkov. Now he does.
(Back in the days when PNC Arena used to show “Ask the Canes” segments on the video boards, one question was, “What’s your best advice for young players?” After several earnest answers from his teammates — “Work hard” “Try your best” — Glen Wesley looked straight into the camera, menacingly, and dead-panned: “Keep your head up.”)
As it became clear that the person in the Hurricanes’ net was actually equipped to stop the puck on this particular night, the Hurricanes reverted back to the way they’re supposed to play, turning the screws late in the first period and throughout the second to score four unanswered goals. You could see their confidence and team game grow, especially as Kochetkov’s play helped stymie three Ottawa power plays down 1-0 or tied 1-1.
Sebastian Aho’s absence from the scoresheet — and he’s not alone — has been a big issue for the Hurricanes; it may not be a coincidence he broke out with two goals and an assist on a night when you could see the Hurricanes relax as they realized, on this Tuesday at least, not every mistake was going to end up in the back of their own net. (Playing seven defensemen, which gets Jalen Chatfield in the lineup defensively and Tony DeAngelo in to help the power play — the best of both worlds — didn’t hurt, either.)
There’s a lot wrong with the Hurricanes right now, but it all starts in net, where the NHL-worst play of Kochetkov and Raanta has poisoned every aspect of the Hurricanes’ game, starting long before this road trip. That changed Tuesday night. So did the way the Hurricanes played.
One good night doesn’t relieve the obligation of Tom Dundon and Don Waddell to make it more of a priority to explore every option in goal — to be fair, the available alternatives don’t appear to be great right now — but it does give the Hurricanes a chance to exhale during a long trip that’s included a players-only meeting, Brind’Amour saying “We’re on our way to losing 50-0” during an Edmonton bench interview, and a third-period collapse in Calgary that felt like a potential turning point for the season.
All of that suddenly seemed less relevant, if not entirely forgotten, when Kochetkov got on a roll Tuesday night.
“I think we were just a little more dialed in,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said afterward. “Obviously, it’s such a fine line from winning and losing and doing the little things right, which I thought we did here tonight for the most part, and then you get pucks to go in.”
No one expects either goalie to be perfect, every night. Raanta’s great when his workload is managed and he’s fully healthy. Kochetkov is a wild card, talented and athletic but still very raw and young, maybe the Hurricanes’ goalie of the future, maybe not. It’s far too soon to say.
But the Hurricanes have to get more of what they got Tuesday and less of everything that came before it on this road trip. They didn’t necessarily need Kochetkov to play that well to beat Ottawa; they just needed Kochetkov to play that well, period.
They need him to do it again.
And again.
And again.
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This story was originally published December 13, 2023 at 12:21 PM with the headline "For one night, Hurricanes get the goaltending — and the win — they desperately needed."
