Coffee is for closers: Carolina Hurricanes don’t need extra games to end Rangers’ year
Hard to believe this is the fourth straight time the Carolina Hurricanes have clinched a series at the first opportunity, and not only because that streak goes back 11 years to Scott Walker’s overtime goal in Boston.
The majority of the heavy lifting has been done by this modern group, winning Game 7 against the Washington Capitals and completing a sweep over the New York Islanders last year and doing the same with a 4-1 win over the New York Rangers in Game 3 on Tuesday in Toronto.
There was a bit of streakage in that, too: The last time the Hurricanes played a best-of-five series, the then-Hartford Whalers swept the Montreal Canadiens. Among this current group, only Justin Williams was alive. Rod Brind’Amour wasn’t even a rookie yet.
This franchise had never before won a playoff series in consecutive seasons. Success was inevitably followed by disappointment — even the greatest success of all, missing the playoffs entirely in 2007. This team has now managed what its predecessors could not.
It’s hard to imagine this going any better, not because of the sweep but because of how they got there, the process even more than the results. They played well in the first two games and didn’t always get rewarded, but never got frustrated. They played poorly at times Tuesday but found a way to rally in the third. Petr Mrazek was excellent in net in the first two games, James Reimer even better in the clincher.
They did it their way, applying pressure and grinding the Rangers down to a very small nub, breaking their will, puncturing the Henrik Lundqvist mystique in the process. At one point, they held the puck in the Rangers’ zone for 75 seconds, changing on the fly, getting a badly needed goal from Teuvo Teravainen to even the score 1-1.
“We always seem to find a way to get going,” Brind’Amour said. “Obviously we did. Huge plays like Sebastian Aho there. Great players have to rise to the occasion. And he did. Your best players have to be your best players.”
Brind’Amour was referring to Aho’s first of two unassisted goals. The second was an empty-netter. The first started with a steal and ended with a top-shelf backhand, with a complete and total undressing of Anthony DeAngelo along the way.
It was entirely in keeping with the series. The Hurricanes’ stars could not have shined any brighter. The Hurricanes’ top line of Andrei Svechnikov, Aho and Teravainen singlehandedly outscored the Rangers 7-4, with Aho compiling a stunning 3-5-8 line in the three games. Warren Foegele summed it up in one word: “Elite.”
“I got two really, really high-end players on my wings,” Aho said. “They both help me a lot out there and we play pretty well together. That’s a big thing for us.”
The Rangers had a Hart Trophy finalist in Artemi Panarin, but the Hurricanes had Aho and Svechnikov, who were the best players on the ice every night. They are officially now the kind of players who can decide a series. They have proven that.
And a tip of the Jack Johnson cap for Adam Fox, another young defenseman who picked the wrong horse when he forced a trade away from the Hurricanes before ever playing a game. Johnson would have gotten a Stanley Cup ring in 2006. Fox is booking tee times while the Hurricanes are booking another couple weeks in the bubble.
So now it’s on to the actual first round against an opponent yet to be determined from among the four teams allowed to skip this preliminary round, two of which are all too familiar: the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers.
The Canes actually earned the right to be in this round before these games against the Rangers were even played, sixth in the conference being good enough in any other season but this one. Undaunted, they easily handled the Rangers, the series going their way from the moment Jaccob Slavin scored all of 61 seconds into the opener.
Anything can happen in the playoffs, especially these playoffs, in an empty building, at a neutral site, amid a pandemic, the end of the series commemorated with fist bumps instead of handshakes. The momentum from one round doesn’t necessarily carry over into the next. Attrition will become a factor at some point. But it’s hard to imagine the Hurricanes getting off to a better start than this.
Everything they needed to happen to go on a long playoff run is happening. The real playoffs start now — or whenever the rest of the NHL catches up to the Hurricanes.
This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 11:42 PM with the headline "Coffee is for closers: Carolina Hurricanes don’t need extra games to end Rangers’ year."
