RALEIGH, N.C. — For the first 40 minutes of both games 1 and 2 of their first-round series, the New York Islanders had the Carolina Hurricanes — in one way or another — right where they wanted them.
When the first puck of the NHL postseason was dropped on Saturday at PNC Arena, the visiting Islanders unsurprisingly had the look of a team that had played weeks of do-or-die hockey after clawing their way into one of the final spots in the Eastern Conference bracket.
New York entered the third period of Game 1 tied with the team many have marked as this spring’s Stanley Cup favorite, and the Islanders probably were deserving of the lead. Carolina — the undisputed kings of Corsi — had been outshot 21-13 after two periods, a stark contrast from the teams’ four regular-season meetings, when the Hurricanes averaged 40 shots on goal per game.
The story was different in Monday’s Game 2, with the Islanders weathering an early Carolina storm to score first … and second, and third. The Hurricanes dominated possession, as expected, but it appeared they would head to Long Island having handed the Islanders home-ice advantage.
In both games, it wasn’t hard to pinpoint why Carolina found itself in such a predicament.
For one, the Islanders, while clearly overmatched on paper, came into the series as winners of eight of their previous nine games. Semyon Varlamov had played so well down the stretch that Patrick Roy — who orchestrated New York’s playoff push after taking over behind the bench midway through the season — started him in favor of 2023 Vezina Trophy runner-up Ilya Sorokin.
“I think this is a perfect example of a team that’s been playing playoff hockey for a month and a team that hasn’t,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said after Game 1. “It was like, ‘Whoa!’ and we just couldn’t get going.”
Secondly, Carolina was supposed to have solved its difficulties scoring in the postseason with the additions of Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Instead, the Hurricanes had just one even-strength goal, Stefan Noesen’s third-period game-winner in Game 1, in the series’ first five periods.
As Carolina piled up shots on goal and shot attempts, Brind’Amour and the Hurricanes were still waiting for the team’s best players to break through as the third period of Game 2 began.
Andrei Svechnikov had arguably been the best player on the ice in the first 100 minutes of the series, but all he had to show for it was a zero in the points column.
Seth Jarvis was among the Hurricanes who rang the post so often that one may have expected to look up and see him outside of a mall entrance asking for donations into a Salvation Army red kettle.
“I say a few choice words to myself to get the anger out,” Jarvis said of moving past the near-goals, “and then just a mental reset.”
Guentzel, the all-in acquisition at the deadline, assisted on Teuvo Teravainen’s second-period power-play goal but was still without a shot on net in the series.
Martin Necas, who followed up his assist on Kuznetsov’s game-winning goal with an empty-netter with 92 seconds left in Monday’s 3-1 win, was the lone player among the team’s top six point-producers to register a point in Game 1. He too had zero shots on goal in Game 2.
Most notably, Sebastian Aho had followed up his playoff-opening performance — arguably one of his worst games of the season — with another frustrating showing, joining Jarvis on the bell-ringing committee and without a point through five periods.
“It’s playoffs. I mean, it’s not easy,” captain Jordan Staal said. “Every game is going to be hard, and there’s going to be frustration. You’ve got to try to eat it.”
In the final 10 minutes of Game 2, the Hurricanes’ stars feasted.
Just past the midway point of the period, Jarvis cruised to the left faceoff dot and beat Varlamov to the short side to get Carolina within one.
“For Jarvy to get that — and it was a beautiful goal — got the place rockin’,” Martinook said, “and then it didn’t really didn’t stop from then on out.”
With goalie Frederik Andersen — shakier than he has been in perhaps any game since returning from injured reserve — on the bench for an extra attacker, several of the Hurricanes’ aforementioned stars helped Aho tie the game.
The Islanders pulled back a defensive zone faceoff, but Jarvis and Guentzel won a race to the corner to establish possession. A bid by Svechnikov was blocked, but Carolina held onto the puck. Brent Burns worked it back down to Jarvis, who one-touched a pass to Svechnikov not far from the spot where the 22-year-old had scored minutes earlier.
Svechnikov’s one-timer sailed toward the far post, where Aho was stationed to redirect the puck in to tie the game with 2:15 left in regulation.
“Winning hockey games, that’s it,” Aho said when asked if he had grown frustrated with his inability to get on the score sheet before the tying goal. “We’re down a goal, so you try to do whatever you can do to score a goal to tie the game.
“But personal stuff? This time of year, it just doesn’t matter. You just try to help the team to win in any way you can. It doesn’t matter who scores the goals.”
Then Martinook used the “juice” from Aho’s equalizer to rumble in on the forecheck, dislodge the puck from Islanders defenseman Noah Dobson and wrap the puck in past an unsuspecting Varlamov for the game-winner, just nine seconds after the tying goal.
Guentzel’s empty-netter got him in the goal column, and Carolina can now head to Long Island with the series firmly in control and a chance to dispatch the Islanders quickly.
“I think, when you can come out with two wins in a series this tight, it’s huge,” Jarvis said. “And now we’re just kind of shifting our focus to Long Island, making sure we’re ready to go, because they’re obviously gonna want to win on home ice. So just making sure we have the right mentality going in there and trying to close it out, but taking it one game at a time”
The Hurricanes also now have all their big players ready to fire, after many misfires in the first two games.
“It’s important because they’re the ones playing the minutes,” Brind’Amour said Tuesday morning of his top players breaking through. “Listen, it’s all about getting wins at this time of year, so it really doesn’t matter how we do it. But if we want to be the team we want to be and move on, your top guys have to be producing.
“So I think it’s good for them just for confidence, too, just to feel like their game is going good, even though they had a great game. They might not have scored. You know how we always view things, (the media), everybody: ‘You’ve got to score, you’ve got to be on the score sheet.’ I think that obviously took care of itself yesterday.”
Now the Hurricanes need to take care of the wounded Islanders — and they have them right where they want them.
(Photo of Sebastian Aho: Katherine Gawlik / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
