Brind'Amour praises Ehlers' sharpness, Aho details power play execution, and Andersen's puck-handling proved crucial in a dominant win.
The Carolina Hurricanes finished out their season series with the Pittsburgh Penguins with a dominant 5-1 victory Sunday evening at PPG Paints Arena.
The Canes scored three power play goals en route to the win and Frederik Andersen made 18 stops in the win.
After the game, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour along with Sebastian Aho, Andersen and Nikolaj Ehlers spoke with the media in Pittsburgh. Here's what they had to say:
Rod Brind'Amour
On the importance of the strong start: It allows you to not do anything different. When you get behind, the natural tendency sometimes is to try to do a little too much. So I think just getting ahead, and to keep adding, was huge.
On the power play: It went in the net. It's nothing that we haven't been doing, we just got some shots that found a way into the back of the net. That happens. I think we've been due for that. As a power play group, we've been getting kind of one a night here and there, but now, all of a sudden, you're gonna have those nights and we haven't really had them all year. It was nice to see.
On limiting Pittsburgh's chances: That's the key. Basically to the end, they only had 12 [shots on goal] and then in the last little bit, they pulled the goalie and all that. But I thought in general, that was a good number. Because you're not gonna score three, four, five a night. You have to try and limit the other team and I thought we did a pretty good job.
On Nikolaj Ehlers: He was sharp right from the get go. Had a lot of jump and you can see that when he has that little extra pep to his step, he's making plays. He was obviously impactful.
On Seth Jarvis: He's obviously one of our top guys and he plays a lot of roles for us. Scoring is part of that. We need him on the scoresheet. When he can be adding that element every night, that just helps our group because he does so much other stuff that maybe doesn't show up on the scoresheet. But when he's on it, we generally do all right.
On Frederik Andersen: Tonight, he just did a nice job handling the puck on the forechecks. He did a real good job there and that really helps out so much when you can relieve the stress. Then when he had to make a few saves, he did. That's what you ask of from your goalie.
Sebastian Aho
On the strong start: It obviously helps when you start on time. Good play by Jordo's line. Fly had a chance to score himself, but got us on the power play and we were able to score on that one and then kind of took over the game from there.
On the power play: We were working, executing the passes, executing the shots. That pretty much summarizes a good power play.
On limiting Pittsburgh's chances: I thought we were breaking the puck out pretty well. They didn't have too many o-zone shifts in our end. Freddie was playing well too. He played the puck with the stick well and that helped the D there a little bit. I thought we were solid.
On if there's adjustments with facing the same team three times in one month: Obviously you want to adjust, but at the end of the day, you want to execute your own game plan. Obviously there's details on everything whether it's special teams or 5v5 that you can execute better and kind of watch the video and all that, but I think it all comes down to executing your own game plan and making hard plays. I thought it was a simple road game for us. We played simple hockey and that got us the results.
Frederik Andersen
On the game: I think our overall game I liked a little better than the last few. We've been playing well against them. It's a good team. Divisional games are always important. Try to do your best against the teams you see a lot and obviously we've seen them a lot lately. It was a good effort tonight.
On special teams: Those are big moments in the game and so it's important to take advantage of them. Either offensively obviously or not really giving them anything on the PK. That's obviously the goal. You can gain momentum from it and come out ahead.
On the defense in front of him: There were some great blocked shots, a few in the second that were big and even leading up to big plays in their end. Just that stuff is huge at this time of year and moving forward.
On playing with the lead: It's huge. You come ready to play and draw a penalty right away on the first shift, that's huge and you want to try and take advantage of it.
On his puck handling: They're trying to make adjustments obviously and you have to be able to see what they're doing. I think they were trying to take the walls away a little bit more and obviously gave me a little bit more time to make a play. Again, just trying to help the D out as much as possible and the best case is that they don't get hit and they can get out of the zone clean.
Nikolaj Ehlers
On the strong start: You always want to start out the right way and I think we really did that today. I think if you can keep that going into the start of the second and the start of the third, you set yourself up for a good game and I think we played great today.
On the power play: Even the one we didn't score on at the end, we had a ton of chances. So I think going in with that attacking mindset and getting pucks to the net, that will create some chaos and get them running around a little bit and that's where you sometimes score the goals. I think we've done a good job with just keeping the attack mindset.
On what the team can take from this game moving forward: The way that we kept playing the same way for all 60 minutes. We played fast, we got pucks deep, we got shots to the net, kept them from bigger chances and we were just able to shut it down and Freddie was great in net. We got a lot that we can build on here.
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