The Carolina Hurricanes had plenty to celebrate in their 3-0 victory over the San Jose Sharks Friday night.
First, Teuvo Teravainen picked up his third-career hat trick — and second-career natural hat trick at that — as he increased his team lead in goals to seven.
It's been a bit of a role reversal for the Finnish forwards as he's usually a pass-first player but he only has one assist on the year.
"I feel like it should be the other way," Teravainen said. "Now I'm the goal scorer, but I'll take it. ... It's nice, but a little bit weird. Not used to it that much, but I guess I just have to keep going."
When asked he likes scoring as much as he has this season, Teravainen gave a very Teravainen-esque answer, "I guess so."
His head coach was a bit more excited.
"He's got a great shot," Rod Brind'Amour said. "Over the years, we've wanted him to shoot more and you could see tonight that he had a couple really nice ones. He can score. ... You probably would have thought it might be the other way because he's pass-first kind of player, but he's got a great shot so hopefully it continues."
Second, Antti Raanta turned aside all 20 of the shots he faced for his 20th career shutout in a stellar bounce back performance.
"When it's tough, it's tough and when you don't get that good game under your belt, it gets tough," Raanta said. "You start thinking too much, overplaying situations and then you're not playing with your instincts anymore. I think since that Seattle game in Seattle, I just tried to refocus, recharge, do the right things in practice and just mentally start preparing for today. Even though we had a 3-0 win, I didn't think that I was close to what I can be. I think there are still some things I can do better, but you take what you get, move on and keep working."
Despite the low volume of shots, Raanta had to make more than a handful of quality saves.
"He made a lot of saves," Brind'Amour said. "I don't know what the shots ended up being, but it's very deceiving because there were some real close ones. He made a lot of really quality saves and allowed us to just kind of cruise tonight."
Third, Sebastian Aho picked up two points to move past his own coach, Rod Brind'Amour, for the fourth most points in franchise history (474).
And finally, Andrei Svechnikov finally made his season debut after seven months away due to recovering from surgery to repair a torn ACL he suffered back in March.
"A couple days ago, I got to know that I was gonna play this game and that day I kind of got butterflies, but this morning I woke up and was very calm," Svechnikov said. "I knew what I was doing and I knew where I was going to be. It was kind of fine, to be honest. It was exciting, but nothing crazy. ... The first couple of shifts, I was kind of nervous, excited and all that stuff, but after a couple of shifts I was fine."
Svechnikov settled into the game almost immediately. In 13:40 of ice time, the Russian winger had four shots on goal — nine shot attempts — three hits and even a penalty.
"It was just awesome to see him," Raanta said. "First game in about eight months, so he's just going to get better. When he gets a couple of goals, that's when we're going to see him back fully on. Now he's more like a grinder a little bit."
"He was great," Brind'Amour said. "He looked like he hadn't missed a beat. He's the type of player where every time he's on the ice, you notice. Every shift he did something. He made a couple of great passes. He could of have a goal for sure too. Ripped a couple and then set up Bunts there backdoor. Svech was very good."
All those factors combined to end in the perfect culmination for a win on home ice. The Hurricanes have now won two in a row and remain undefeated at PNC Arena.
"It's nice to be home," Teravainen said. "There were a lot of road games at the start there, but here it's a special place to play. We feel like we needed to come home and play a couple of games here to get back on track."
Unfortunately for them though, they'll head back on the road for a three-game swing starting with a game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 30 — the Canes' first divisional matchup of the season.
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