Sunday night against the Montreal Canadiens at PNC Arena, the Carolina Hurricanes found themselves in a familiar yet totally unfamiliar spot. The familiar position was trailing 1-0 late in the game despite a number of grade A chances against Montreal goalie Carey Price.
The unfamiliar position, for a team that currently holds the league’s longest playoff drought, was playing a game in late March with massive playoff implications. The Canes needed a win in that game to maintain a multi-point lead over Montreal for the Eastern Conference’s first wild card spot.
Many past iterations of the Canes would have continued to fire shot after shot on Price, ended up falling by a goal or two and cursed their luck against a hot goalie after the game. But those past iterations didn’t get themselves to this position late in the season. This team is different. This team gets it done. This team finds a way.
And find a way it did. With 5:39 left, defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk tied the game with a seeing-eye wrister from the point that beat Price, paving the way for Andrei Svechnikov to give the team a crucial victory in overtime.
“I just don’t think we’ve ever got down about a situation,” goalie Curtis McElhinney said. “There’s been some tough games, maybe some tough periods but we’ve kind of just hung in there. I think it showed tonight after the second period. We came out pretty strong in the third. It ends up just being a puck thrown from the blue line takes a bounce or something goes in. That’s the way the game is right now.”
The Canes have rode that belief, that stick with it attitude, to the precipice of their first playoff appearance since 2009. With seven games to play, Carolina sits in the Eastern Conference’s first wild card spot with 91 points in 75 games, three above Montreal with a game in hand, and five above the Columbus Blue Jackets, the first team outside the playoff picture (Carolina and Columbus have played the same number of games).
The Canes have gotten to this point with a blistering 25-9-2 record since the calendar flipped to 2019. That level of belief throughout the whole group has powered the team to this point.
It’s a belief that starts with first-year head coach Rod Brind’Amour, who captained the Canes’ Stanley Cup Champion team in 2006. It’s a belief that works its way down through the whole lineup, from captain Justin Williams and his penchant for leading by example with clutch goals, to McElhinney and Petr Mrazek giving the team a chance with their play in net every night, to the coming out party for star Finnish forwards Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen, to a promising debut for Svechnikov, to a third-pairing defenseman in van Riemsdyk scoring the biggest goal of the season.
“It starts with [Brind’Amour],” van Riemsdyk said. “I think he shows a lot of belief in us. And then it trickles its way down. When he says he knows we’re a playoff team, he knows we can make a run and do some damage, you believe it in his voice. I think that’s huge, and then we’ve got great leadership and it just kind of trickles down from there.”
The comeback win over Montreal was not an isolated event during this breakthrough season. The Canes have had to battle back on multiple occasions this season, including against the Habs, and earlier on the recent five-game homestand (in which the team went 4-1).
In another pivotal game against the Pittsburgh Penguins last week, the Canes gave up a late goal to fall behind 2-1. No matter, as Williams evened the score with an extra-attacker goal, allowing his team to pick up a shootout win to stay within reach of Pittsburgh for third place in the Metropolitan Division.
“You’ve got to believe that you can do it,” Williams said after that game. “See it, think it, do it. If we’re thinking it and believing it, then the next process is doing it. We’ve been pretty good with that this year.”
It’s a belief that’s been reflected in the stands as well. After years of poor attendance, the crowds have started to return to watch a playoff contender. The Canes average 14,133 fans per game this year, up from 13,320 last year, according to ESPN’s attendance figures.
Carolina has captivated its fans this year with the postgame “Storm Surge” celebrations, and Canadian TV host Don Cherry critiquing the team only fueled that fire. Cherry called the Hurricanes a “bunch of jerks”, which has become a rallying cry and de facto slogan for this fan base.
During the team’s two wins this past weekend, chants of “We want playoffs” rained down from the stands. For those that remember what it was like in this community in the Hurricanes’ past glory days, the lively crowds have been another source of fuel.
“It’s been a couple months now it seems like,” Brind’Amour said. “But tonight, you feel it when we score a goal. It shakes you. I love it. These people deserve to have some fun. We’ve had a lot of years here where it wasn’t too exciting. So [the fans] stuck with us. I think we’re providing an entertaining brand of hockey. It sure is exciting. It’s not necessarily how we draw it up, but it’s electric in here and obviously we hope it continues.”
Brind’Amour, this group of players and its fans are on the verge of something special. If the Canes can take care of business over their remaining seven games, playoff hockey will return to Raleigh for the first time in a decade.
After that, who knows? The first thing a team needs for a deep playoff run is belief. This team has that and then some. As Williams said, the next step after believing is to get the job done. So far, this group has done just that at every turn. See it, think it, do it.
