Hurricanes’ ‘big man at the hoop’ delivers big playoff victory over Lightning

It was the kind of win that championship teams can be built on and draw from, even if not this season.

On the road. Down 2-0 in a playoff series. Facing the reigning Stanley Cup champions, on their ice. Down three forwards after losing one to injury in Game 3.

The Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning went into overtime Thursday at Amalie Arena. Losing the game in sudden death would not have meant the end of the season for the Hurricanes but it would have pushed them to the brink of elimination.

So who did they turn to? Sebastian Aho called him the “big man at the hoop.”

Maybe “hoop” is some Finnish hockey jargon for net but Jordan Staal is a big man. At 6-4 and listed at 220 pounds, he could be a power forward on some basketball teams and a problem to contain around the hoop. He is in hockey around the net.

Needing a goal for the Canes to get back into the series, Aho and Staal supplied it on an overtime power play. Aho took a pass from Teuvo Teravainen and whistled a shot toward the net and the “Big Cat,” Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. The puck glanced off Staal for his fifth goal of the playoffs and the 3-2 victory.

“What I love about it is everybody is getting to see what he’s all about this year,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said of Staal, his captain. “He was great again tonight. The value of this guy is off the charts, and he’s your leader, too.”

Where does that rank on the scale of gutsy wins?

“It’s at the top, right?” defenseman Brett Pesce said. “I’m so proud of everyone on our team. We get punched in the face over and over, tough bounces, and we just stick with it.”

Canes forwards injured

Pesce wasn’t punched in the face but was blindsided on a hit by Nikita Kucherov in the first period and left to enter the concussion protocol. But he was back for the second, back to blast a shot past Vasilevskiy that gave the Canes a 1-0 lead for only the second time in nine games in the playoffs.

Forward Warren Foegele wasn’t as fortunate. Foegele injured a shoulder after a hit from Erik Cernak in the second, tried to play in the third but could not.

The Canes’ attrition at forward continued as Foegele joined center Vincent Trocheck and winger Nino Niederreiter on the injury list. Brind’Amour did not have an update on Foegele immediately after the game, saying, “I’m not sure how that’s going to shake out.”

After the Canes lost the first two games of the series at home, Brind’Amour made some changes. The biggest was having goalie Petr Mrazek make his first start of the playoffs and Mrazek came up big with 35 saves. Another was putting back together a top line of Aho centering Teravainen and Svechnikov.

Aho, playing with competitive fire, jostled at times by the Lightning, responded with a goal and two assists. Teravainen had two assists and Svechnikov assisted on the first goal of the game -- the blast by Pesce, who stepped into the shot at the top of the right circle after a nice drop pass from Svechnikov.

It was a test of wills in the overtime. The Canes had to kill off the final 52 seconds of a Dougie Hamilton tripping penalty to begin the OT and did as Staal had a good shorthanded chance. Kucherov then was called for holding Martin Necas’ stick at 4:16 and Staal ended it at 5:57 of overtime.

Carolina wins when it needed to

Game 4 is Saturday and the Lightning will be ready. But so will the Canes, who now have assured themselves of having another home game at PNC Arena with the kind of victory that can resonate this year and in future seasons.

“As I’ve said all year I’m always proud of the group,” Brind’Amour said. “Whatever happens to them they seem to find a way to focus on their game and go do their job, That’s what happened tonight.

“Just some big, big play by the whole group. Everybody just dug in. We got, I think, a win that we deserved. I don’t know if tonight we were the better team. That’s debatable. But overall we got something that we deserved -- to be back in the series, to be back.”

Hurricanes at Lightning

When: 4 p.m., Saturday

Where: Amalie Arena, Tampa, Fla.

Watch: USA

This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 7:30 AM with the headline "Hurricanes’ ‘big man at the hoop’ delivers big playoff victory over Lightning."

Chip Alexander

The News & Observer

919-829-8945

In more than 40 years at The N&O, Chip Alexander has covered the N.C. State, UNC, Duke and East Carolina beats, and now is in his 15th season on the Carolina Hurricanes beat. Alexander, who has won numerous writing awards at the state and national level, covered the Hurricanes’ move to North Carolina in 1997 and was a part of The N&O’s coverage of the Canes’ 2006 Stanley Cup run.