The Carolina Hurricanes battled through some adversity to come out ahead in a 5-3 win over the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night at PNC Arena.
Andrei Svechnikov recorded a hat trick including the game winner to break a late, third-period tie and push the Canes to a win.
Here are my three takeaways from the victory:
Defensive Effort
Before the game, Rod Brind'Amour stated that the team doesn't change how they play regardless of who's in net.
While I believe him, I think there's an extra oomph that guys are both willing to give and know they have to give when they have a guy in net that is struggling as much as Antti Raanta is.
The Canes were tenacious in the defensive zone and very active with their sticks. They routinely picked off a lot of Montreal's east-to-west passing attempts and stacked up at the blueline.
Teuvo Teravainen, who's a player that more so gets talked about for his offensive skills but is actually a really good defensive player, made three really high-end stick plays to nullify good chances for Montreal.
On the penalty kill, they allowed a total of two shots on goal, one of those being a goal, but it was also a high-end, solo play by Mike Matheson.
But the best part was the third period effort following the Habs' third goal.
After allowing that breakaway goal just 25 seconds into the period, the Canadiens had just one more shot on goal for the entire period despite two power plays and a goalie pull.
It was complete domination from that point to the end.
"That's the story of the game," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour on the third period effort. "Nothing was really going our way. We had a great first period and you look up and somehow it's 2-2. Like, 'What just happened?' and then we're up going into the third and had a great shift going. I'm thinking, 'Okay, good.' We get a great one-time option coming down the pipe and we fan on it and it's a breakaway and it's in your net and your like, 'Oh boy.' And then we got two penalties on top of it that were it felt like it just wasn't going to go our way, but I loved how the guys just killed those penalties. That [first one] might have been the only one we gave up the whole period. Stuck with it and we got what we deserved tonight."
Forechecking
Another piece of the puzzle that makes the defensive effort able to be so effective is how good the Hurricanes' forecheck was.
In particular two lines really gave the Habs headaches: the Jordan Staal line and the Jack Drury line.
Both lines spent a majority of their ice time down low in the Montreal zone and just wore down the Canadiens. In fact, those two lines drew all three of Carolina's power play opportunities too.
It was clinical to watch them work and when you can have two lines grinding down teams that hard, it really opens things up for your skill line to hop on and do their job.
"That was huge to have that in that game because we needed it," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour on those two lines. "We needed to get something going and those lines were doing that."
And when those lines can score too, like the Drury line did as Stefan Noesen fed Jesper Fast for a one-timer, it just makes everything even easier.
Storylines
Take your pick from the crop of storylines from last night:
- undefined
"He's gotta get on the scoresheet for us to be the team we need to be," Brind'Amour said. "He's a dominant player and to be that, you've got to score. He does other things, obviously, but tonight that was the big difference."
- undefined
"I've been waiting for those a little bit this year," Fast said. "They haven't come easy so far, so of course it's a good feeling to get two goals today and hopefully I can ride the wave a little bit here."
- undefined
"I just try to do my job every night," Aho said. "Obviously try to score four points every night, but it doesn't always go your way. I feel like we've been playing pretty good with Svechnikov and Teravainen. They've obviously been helping me a lot. Just try to keep it going."
- undefined
"He didn't have a ton of work, but it was just good to get him back in here and get him hopefully feeling good about the way things went," Brind'Amour said.
- undefined