It was a pair of unlikely heroes that helped the Carolina Hurricanes defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 in overtime Saturday night at PNC Arena.
The first, as we all expected, was offensive dynamo Brett Pesce who led the way for the Hurricanes with five shots and two goals — both the first of the game and the eventual game winner — through 19:36 of ice time.
"He's had so many opportunities this year and like he said, it was like he had been saving them up for the right time," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "Obviously we needed him tonight, but he's always getting opportunities because he knows how to get in there, the timing for joining the rush or whatever it is. It was nice to see."
"I saw that I had some room, so just tried to sneak behind and good things happen when you put the puck on net," Pesce said on his overtime goal. "Thankfully, I got a few bounces tonight."
However, and perhaps more importantly, he was actually, and not sarcastically this time, back to his usual defensively-great self against the Penguins.
While he was only credited with two blocks on the official game sheet, he had more like 5-6 key blocks over the course of the game that kept the Penguins off the board.
He had a lot of ice time against the Sidney Crosby line and was a big key in the Canes' perfect PK.
The other hero for Carolina was netminder Antti Raanta.
The Finnish netminder faced 40 shots over the course of the night, the most shots he's faced in a regular season game since March 1 2022 (41 shots), and only two of those got past him.
"He made a bunch of other close ones in tight that didn't really seem that dangerous but were," Brind'Amour said. "He was right on. He was great and allowed us to get the win because if he wasn't on tonight, we would have been in trouble."
Even with Jake Guentzel falling on top of him multiple times, Raanta battled through and came up big for the Canes time and time again, but no time bigger than his glove save on Crosby.
"I would say that it's not that much skill, but more so puck luck also that your glove just happens to be there when you stretch out like that," Raanta said. "Obviously great to make that kind of save. Crosby's been scoring against us a lot, so great to make that save. Overall today, I think it just felt like I was in the right spot all the time. I was seeing the shots and making the saves that I had to make. I think that's what I've been focused on but then something like that happens also when you do the small things right. Great to see a little highlight reel save here and there also."
Raanta has now had back-to-back starts with a 0.950+ save percentages and he's looked to be back to form.
The Hurricanes jumped out to a 2-0 lead after one period with goals from Pesce and Jordan Martinook and the lead could have been much greater if not for the great game Tristan Jarry played.
In the second, Pittsburgh came alive, but couldn't get any to go past Raanta.
However, in the third, Crosby fed Guentzel on a 2-on-1 for the first strike and then with less than a minute remaining and the goalie pulled, a rebound popped right out to Bryan Rust.
So overtime came and it wasn't long before Pesce beat Jarry again for the win.