A roller-coaster of a game full of ups and downs occurred when the Carolina Hurricanes traveled to the Wells Fargo Center to take on the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, March 18.
In classic March Madness fashion, the Canes (45-15-8) stunned the Flyers (25-32-12) thanks to a buzzer-beating goal by center Martin Necas to tie the game at the end of regulation and center Sebastion Aho’s goal to put the game away just 28 seconds into overtime.
The Hurricanes came into this game on a bit of a cold streak. The night before, they lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-2. Head coach Rod Brind’Amour saw this loss as an opportunity to mix up the top three forward lines from their usual rotation.
The line change gave a boost to the struggling offense and especially to Aho, who recorded the seventh hat trick of his career tonight after not scoring in the past seven games.
After a dominant first period, Aho was the one who got the Canes on the board first thanks to a great pass from Necas. In the second period, he answered the bell again with his second goal of the game to give the Canes a 3-1 lead against a Flyers team who has not won a game after being down two goals all year.
Once the third period concluded, which is where the game got flipped on its head multiple times, Aho took the game into his own hands by whipping the puck through Flyers defenseman Tony DeAngelo’s legs, off the back bar and into the goal.
It wasn’t the first time Aho deked DeAngelo right out of his skates as he’d pulled a similar move back in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs to lead the Hurricanes in a series sweep against the Rangers.
Despite the five-goal scorecard and Aho’s hat trick, it was not smooth sailing for the Hurricanes for most of the contest. After Aho’s first two goals and defenseman Brady Skjei’s goal near the tail end of the first period — which marked his third goal in the last three games — Carolina’s offensive production came to a grinding halt.
Once the Canes went up 3-1, the Flyers came alive again to score three goals in a row and earn a 4-3 lead with 14 minutes left to play in the third. Flyers right wing Tyson Foerster led the offensive charge and looked to put the game out of reach for a Canes team who needed the win to hang on to first place in the Metropolitan Division.
After goalie Frederik Andersen had been pulled and Carolina’s hopes seemed to be dashed, Necas was able to score on a puck that squeaked through the Flyers’ crease with just 0.3 seconds left to get his second and most important point of the game.
The line mix-up from Brind’Amour showed exactly where the strengths and weaknesses of this Carolina team are: in the forecheck. In the first period playing on the new lines, the Canes looked determined to forecheck and stick to the system that Brind’Amour had designed for them to play. But after a while, they let their foot off the gas and let the Flyers back into the game, a bad habit that has plagued the Hurricanes all year long.
Many of Carolina’s goals and opportunities come from the Canes committing to a physical forecheck, not from no-look backward passes. This forecheck creates opportunities for their defenseman to score, and Carolina’s defensemen have racked up more goals than any other team in the NHL. If the Hurricanes can finish out the regular season establishing a forecheck and dealing more hits than they are taking, they will sit atop the Metropolitan division.
The Canes will look to ride the momentum from this game when they take on the New York Rangers on Tuesday, March 21 in Madison Square Garden at 7 p.m.
