A stunning three-goal surge in the final minutes erased a deficit, etching a historic comeback win for the Hurricanes.
With just under five minutes to go and staring up at a two-goal deficit, it probably would have been pretty easy for the Carolina Hurricanes to have packed it in.
Instead, the team ratcheted up the pressure and found not one, not two, but three goals in the final two minutes of regulation to steal a 5-4 win right out from the under the trunks of the Utah Mammoth Thursday night at Lenovo Center.
Andrei Svechnikov and Shayne Gostisbehere each scored a pair of goals, including one a piece in the final flurry, but it was the captain Jordan Staal who sealed the win with a backdoor tap-in with just 29.4 seconds to go in the game.
"It's always nice to score goals, especially game winners," Staal said. "It's about making memories. I love the game, I love being a part of nights like this and you want more of them. You're chasing them and chasing those memories to do it alongside the guys in this room, the friends. Battling with each other is what I live for and what I do this job for. Tonight was one of the good memories."
It was a comeback for the ages too, as the Canes became just the third team in NHL history to win in regulation when trailing by two goals with under two minutes to go.
Shockingly too, it was the power play which gave the team a couple of those critical goals they needed as it had been atrocious all night. But in the end, it came through when it needed to.
"We couldn't even do the breakouts, so it was kind of struggling, but we still found a way," Svechnikov said.
But the team gave a lot of credit to the fans and their energy to help fuel the comeback.
Once Svechnikov scored to cut the lead to just one, it got loud in Lenovo Center and every time something else happened — Gostisbehere's tally 32 seconds later, Staal's go-ahead goal — the place just got louder and louder.
"There's something to be said about this building," Staal said. "The fans here are great. They're always behind us, but once it gets going and fired up, you can tell and the guys feed off of that.
"When we got the tying goal, for sure, you could really feel it," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "You can't understate that. That emotional lift that the crowd can give you."
That game was also certainly a roller coaster of emotions for Gostisbehere, who returned to the lineup following a five-game absence, as he played a big part in five of the nine total goals scored Thursday night.
He fell down, giving up a lane for Utah's first goal and then flubbed the puck leading to the Mammoth's go-ahead third goal, but he was also responsible for tying it at two and four and also had the primary assist on one of Svechnikov's two tallies.
You expected there to be some rust due to the layoff, but a veteran like Gostisbehere showed how important it is not to get bogged down in those mistakes.
"It's just about being relentless," Gostisbehere said. "To never say die and if you put pucks to the net, you never know what's going to happen. Just pedal to the metal. We just kept going."
Overall though, it was Svechnikov who was hands down the best player on the ice.
His two goals gave him 20 on the season, matching his previous season total in 19 fewer games and his three-point night pushed him to 46 on the year.
"He was our best forward and maybe the best on the ice," Brind'Amour said. "He was impactful the whole night and was really driving play. That's the kind of player he can be and if he continues to do that, it bodes well for us."
The Russian forward has been on another level this season and part of me wonders how much that 2023 ACL injury had weighed on him previously.
According to NHL EDGE data, this season, Svechnikov is in the 80th-plus percentile for all of the major skating points that they track (max speed, 22+ mph bursts, 20-22mph bursts, 18-20mph bursts).
That's a significant increase from the previous two seasons where he was hovering around the 50-60th percentiles and is even better than that 2022-23 season, which perhaps explains why he's having such a strong bounce back year.
"You saw him tonight," Staal said. "He wasn't only scoring goals, but he was physical, he was hard, he was skating well. He's got his strength back and his speed. I think he's also making better decisions with the puck as well and making it hard on teams to take it off of him. Going to the dirty areas and scoring goals. He's the player that we all know he can be and this year he's been solid all throughout."
The Hurricanes certainly need him to be that game breaking talent that everyone knows he's capable of being and so far, he's delivering and this historic, comeback win is just another example of his impact.
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