The Carolina Hurricanes rode an emotional roller coaster all the way to a 5-2 win Thursday night at PNC Arena.
Martin Necas scored the first three goals of the game for his first career hat trick while Michael Bunting and Seth Jarvis provided the final two.
Pyotr Kochetkov started the game for Carolina, stopped six of eight, got pulled for Antti Raanta who stopped nine of nine, but then Raanta left the game with a lower body injury and Kochetkov came back in and stopped ten of ten.
After the game, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour along with Necas and Bunting spoke with the media. Here's what they had to say:
Rod Brind'Amour
On Pyotr Kochetkov coming back into the game: Crazy. Give him a lot of credit because he wasn't happy with what happened. You're not thinking that he's going to have to get back in there, but he did and he played great. That's got to be a real big confidence boost for him.
On the decision to pull him initially: I just... I don't know. You could have gone either way. We could have let him play it out, but we just decided to get Raanta in there. Plus we kind of wanted to play Raanta anyway. We were on the fence because he had been out for so long. It was just to change things up. Raanta played really well, unfortunately then he got hurt.
On Antti Raanta's status: No [update]. We're getting him checked out tomorrow.
On if Spencer Martin served as the emergency backup: Great question. Five times, we've had to use the emergency guy this year. Not use him, but get him ready, so we knew the procedure pretty well. And then come to find out we could use him. So he was our backup guy sitting in the room. At least that's what I was told.
On Michael Bunting: That's his game. We always say whatever you gotta do. Got a huge goal because it was needed at that time. Drew some penalties and really should have drawn another one. I don't know how it ended up like that, but I guess that's another discussion.
On the penalty kill: The kill was great. They had a couple of chances, but with the talent they're throwing out there... really if you look at it for the whole of the game, what we gave up over that stretch was pretty impressive. I give our kill a lot of credit.
On Jaccob Slavin and Brent Burns: They were great and they had to play a lot more minutes because [Brett] Pesce wasn't in there. I didn't really look at it but it felt like they were out way more than they normally are out of necessity. They stepped up.
On Brett Pesce's absence: We knew, not last minute, but maybe 5 o'clock. So it kind of put everything in a little bit of a spin there. Tonight was different on that matchup with how we were going about it both up front and on the back. It was a little bit dicey, or not as normal as we do it, but it worked out.
On game planning for players like Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon: Listen, they're as elite as they come. You watch it every night. You don't really stop those guys. You need a lot of help. Everyone knows it. 'I might have you, but where's my help?' Just being conscious of that. I thought we did a pretty good job.
On Martin Necas' recent hot streak: I wish I could tell you there was one thing. I haven't really noticed anything [different]. Certainly the puck is going in for him, which is great. He's a talent. We know that. Sometimes it goes away for a while, but it's always there. When you're that good of a player, you can have games like that where you just explode. That's what you saw.
On choosing who goes over the boards on a delayed call: There's different factors really. It depends on who's already out. A lot of the time it's just the next best guy. You kind of know who it is and he went out for it. As long as we have somebody out there. We had too many men at one point. Messed up there. We weren't the sharpest tonight, but the effort was there, that's for sure.
On Teuvo Teravainen: Quietly under the radar again. And he's part of the kill too. He definitely was a big part of this win.
On Teravainen only having had nine games in his career with three assists: That's still pretty good. But yeah, you'd think he'd have more.
On the team rising to the challenge: I liked how we got better. I didn't love the start even though we were up 3-0 at one point. We only had five shots so it wasn't really typical of how I like to see it. I thought even though they came out really well in the third, I felt like after the first couple of minutes, we were really good. I liked the overall game.
On Dmitry Orlov: Again, because Pesce was out, we had to move pieces around. He was really good. That's why we brought him in. We get injuries but we have a great guy sitting there waiting to get into action. He played well.
On Seth Jarvis' status following the third period shot block that sent him to the room: There's always concern. I think he's already been checked out. Hopefully it's nothing serious serious, but he had a great game too. Had a backcheck there when we were on the power play. Caught somebody. He's been really good.
Martin Necas
On getting his first career hat trick: I waited long enough. I was hoping to get one soon, so it was nice. A good start to the game obviously. They got two back and it was kind of a tight game, but it feels nice. It's always nice to get a hatty with the win.
On when his last hat trick was: I don't know. Maybe one in Czech League my first year, I think, but other than that nope. I wasn't shooting enough, I guess.
On getting the call to go over the boards on the delayed call: Actually [Stefan] Noesen was supposed to go on the ice and he was like, 'Necy, go.' So I stepped on the ice. So I give him a secondary apple there.
On having a bunch of guys that can set him up: On the third goal, [Teuvo Teravainen] just found me there in front. And on the second, it was a nice pass by [Brent Burns]. We've got some good players here, so I know to get open and be ready to shoot it. I've kind of become more of a shooter over the last few games and I feel like that's something I have to be better at.
On it being a tough opponent : I feel like we weren't great today to be honest and there were a lot of 4v4 and PK and power plays. Our PK was great. They have one of the best power plays in the league. I don't know about stats, but they have pretty special players out there and we just played aggressive and didn't give them much. We scored a goal on the power play which put us two ahead and then we just battled through.
On if anything feels different for him as of late: I just had a little mental reset. I don't know, it's tough to say. I try to play the same game. Obviously shooting a little more. That was kind of my thing coming back from injury. I feel like that kind of helped. It's just been a few games but just have to keep it going till the end of the season.
Michael Bunting
On if this was the kind of game he likes to be a part of: It's fun. Obviously it's fun when there's emotion in the game and both teams are being competitive and it gets chippy. It's kind of like a playoff atmosphere when games are like that. I always like games like that.
On if he plays better when the games get chippier: Yeah, maybe. I guess you kind of get into it pretty quick especially when things get rough out there. Sometimes when you take a hit you get right into the game. Sometimes that gets me going too. It was a good game I thought. Obviously they came back there at the end of the first period, but I thought we played well in the second and then finished it off in the third.
On Teravainen's pass to him on his goal: Yeah that was great. He's got some great poise and silky mitts and he's able to make those plays. That's my game in the power play, to find the soft spot and try to get open and support the guys on the flanks and he was able to find me.
On his dust up with Logan O'Connor: I think that was spur of the moment. I don't even know what happened. I just turned around and I saw him swinging at me and he missed and then I got in a headlock and down in a scrum. I don't really know what happened, but that's hockey. I'm not going to really think much about it. Just move on and look forward to the next game.
On the intensity of the game: We haven't seen them since the start of the year. Both teams are up there in the standings and both teams want to win and compete. We're both coming off of losses and two points are big at this time of the year. We're getting down to crunch time and every game matters.
On the weird goaltending situation: I think both goalies handled it really well. Raanta handled it well going into the second period and made some great saves and obviously [his injury] was unfortuante, but then [Kochetkov] goes back in and made some great and game-changing saves too. I thought both of them played excellent.
On the message to the team following the end of the first period: You don't want that to happen, but it happened at the right time. We were able to get into the room and regroup and take a breather and talk about what we needed to do. I thought we came out in the second period and we were able to take the two goal lead back and go from there.