The Carolina Hurricanes continued their pendulum swing of a season as they put together a strong 60-minute performance to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-2.
The Canes' top line had a three-goal performance and Antti Raanta stopped 26 of 28 shots.
Here are my three takeaways from the win:
Fin(n)ish
It was both a good night for the Hurricanes finishing their chances and for the Finnish players.
We'll start with the finish.
In the first period, the Hurricanes were definitely snakebitten.
Sebastian Aho shot a slot chance directly into Tristan Jarry, Jordan Martinook baseball batted a chance off the crossbar and Stefan Noesen missed on a partial breakaway wide, just to name a few.
But as the team kept pushing, the goals started to come.
Aho finished off a great tic-tac-toe play following a terrific one-touch pass by Teuvo Teravainen, Brent Burns unleashed a bomb on the power play (technically the power play expired despite the penalty box door not even having been opened yet by the time the puck went in), Seth Jarvis deflected in a Jaccob Slavin centering feed and then Jarvis nailed the empty netter.
The Hurricanes' top line, AKA the Finnish Trio (Jarvis is an honorary Finn, didn't you know?), scored three time and had a night for themselves matched up against the Sidney Crosby line.
Father Finn, Antti Raanta, also had a night for himself. He made timely save after timely save including two stops on two separate shorthanded breakaways.
And the final Finn, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, had over a 60% Corsi For and expected goal percentage.
You know what they say, Finns get wins.
Extra Efforts
The Hurricanes don't come out with the win if not for a few key plays, by guys selling out.
Multiple times, Penguins skaters had open nets with the puck on their sticks, but the Canes skaters gave that extra effort to deny them goals.
"We had a few of those tonight," Rod Brind'Amour said. "Almost empty nets and we were able just to get sticks on them. Making those extra efforts, that's what you've got to have.
The two biggest I think back to were Brady Skjei's diving stick save on Reilly Smith and Seth Jarvis' sellout backcheck on Jake Guentzel.
Jarvis had the puck knocked away from him on a 3-on-2 and then it quickly went the other way. Instead of hanging his head, Jarvis hauled a-- back and broke up a 2-on-1, slamming himself into the end boards in the process.
"That was heavy, eh?," Jarvis said. "I just winded myself. I missed the opportunity on one end so I wasn't letting them score on the other. [Kotkaniemi] calls me a cannonball and I really feel like I went into the boards like one there."
Defensive Changes
Heading into the game, Brind'Amour talked about how he really didn't want to touch his defensive top four due to their chemistry, but after the Dmitry Orlov and Tony DeAngelo pairing gave up yet another goal off a missed assignment, he had seen enough.
For the remainder of the game, Brady Skjei played with DeAngelo and Brett Pesce played with Orlov.
Skjei and Pesce still got some time together for some crucial moments down the stretch, but DeAngelo and Orlov didn't spend any more time together after the first period.
The team has been trying to make the two of them work because Orlov was brought in at $7.75 million and DeAngelo is the PP1 quarterback, but it just hasn't worked at all.
Has the pairing reached its end? Will we perhaps see some changes moving forward?
"Gotta keep trying, right?," Brind'Amour said after the game. "We've got good ones back there. Just the chemistry and the fit. That might be a little bit of a work in progress, but we'll keep at it."
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Seth Jarvis and Carolina Hurricanes Top Line Propels Team to Victory Over Pittsburgh Penguins