Down three goals after the first period and with at least two more games to play, it would have been easy for the Hurricanes to mail this one in and fight another day, but that isn’t the identity of this team.
The Canes erased a three-goal deficit against the Devils in Game 5 in less than six minutes, stunning New Jersey and causing Lenovo Center to erupt.
Left wing Taylor Hall started it, right wing Jackson Blake continued it and despite Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe calling a timeout to try and stop it, right wing Andrei Svechnikov completed the comeback before you could blink. The Caniacs were loud, and the momentum had snowballed.
“This is a tough, tough building to play in, and a very hard team to play against, a very good team,” said Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe.
Both the Devils and Hurricanes tallied their fourth goal in the second period, a scoresheet stalemate that would last until center Sebastian Aho put Carolina through to the second round 4:17 into double overtime.
Head coach Rod Brind’Amour asked his team to battle, and they won the war.
“I give the guys so much credit because there aren’t many games that, even when we don’t play well, that we don’t get back in the game, we find a way,” Brind’Amour said.
The ecstatic celebrations look like they come from a team that hasn’t won a series in seven years, except they’re quite the opposite. Under Brind’Amour, the team has won a series in all of his first seven seasons as head coach, an NHL first.
The Canes are a hard-nosed team, a trait they have embodied from the man behind the bench. His testaments to getting rewarded when you work for it were not just shown in the actions on the ice, but in the words of the players after.
“Some teams would just kind of pack it in and say we’re down 3-0 and we would have a 3-2 [series] lead after this game, but that’s just not the way we are and I think it’s really cool the way we won tonight,” Blake said.
“We’re a hard-working team that’s going to go out there and try to complete every shift, [Brind’Amour] talks about it all the time: consistency, and so we’re just trying to stick to that first,” said defenseman Jaccob Slavin.
The Devils jumped out to a 3-0 lead in less than 10 minutes, but the Hurricanes were quick to put three goals from center Dawson Mercer, right wing Timo Meier and right wing Stefan Noesen behind them. It was two trade-deadline acquisitions that sparked the beginning of the three-goal comeback.
With a power play coming to an end, Hall forced a pass across the slot to center Logan Stankoven, who one-timed a shot on goal. Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom appeared to have saved and covered it, but Hall was the first to see the puck sitting on the goal line and tap it in.
Blake cut the deficit to one when a shot squeaked past Markstrom as he stopped hugging the post to play the pass and Svechnikov tied it at 3-3 with a snap-shot snipe.
Svechnikov, who scored his fifth goal of the postseason, has come into a form that was missed in the regular season. He set a career-high in shots on goal with nine in Game 5, a display of the level he has been at with a return to the first line and power play unit.
“I don’t want to say we forgot what it was like, [but] he went through a stretch there, and now it’s like, there it is,” Brind’Amour said. “That’s the guys that we all love.”
The Devils only took 2:26 to regain the lead thanks to center Nico Hischier jumping into the slot and wristing a shot past Canes netminder Pyotr Kochetkov. It could have been a death-blow, but the Canes continued to put the pressure on and drew two tripping penalties to jump on a 5-on-3 power play.
As time wound down on the two-man advantage, Aho received a pass from center Seth Jarvis and made no mistake to bury it in the back of the net. Lenovo Center erupted for a fourth time in the second period.
From the third period onward, the Hurricanes outshot the Devils 34-12, a resounding showing of dominance. If it weren’t for Markstom ‘standing on his head’, the game would have been over a lot sooner.
“He was making unbelievable saves,” Brind’Amour said. “That was one of the better goaltending performances I witnessed. Once he got dialed in, you kind of think, ‘Okay, it’s going to have to bank off somebody or we’re not beating them.’ He was their best player for sure.”
Fortunately for the Canes, center Jesperi Kotkaniemi sacrificed his body to draw a high-sticking double minor that resulted in stitches and the game-winning goal. From almost the same spot as his previous power-play goal, Aho unleashed a one-timer to beat Markstrom and the celebrations began.
“Unreal,” Aho said. “I blacked out for a second there, crowd goes nuts, guys are jumping on you, it’s unreal, really good feeling”
With Round 1 done, the Canes await the winner of the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals series with bated breath. The team will wait on at least the result of that series before they know when and where their next matchup is.
