Hurricanes’ playoff savvy, hard lessons learned on display in thumping of Devils
Seth Jarvis had the opposing defenseman lined up, in his sights, coming around the net with his head down, fumbling for the puck. And yes, he knew it was Brett Pesce.
Jarvis lit up his former teammate, sending him spinning, one of the Carolina Hurricanes’ biggest hits in a game in which they did just about everything right — physically, offensively, defensively, mentally. It was reminiscent of the Andrei Svechnikov hit on Hampus Lindholm in 2022 that forever flipped the script between the Hurricanes and Boston Bruins, albeit without the same degree of unrestrained violence.
“I don’t inflict as much damage as Svech,” Jarvis said. “A good hit nonetheless.”
There was a flipping of the script here, too, but it had very little to do with any of the Hurricanes’ extensive history with the New Jersey Devils, who were, in a single word from their coach, “overmatched” in Game 1, and everything to do with the Hurricanes’ own demons.
Eventually, you’d expect the six years of playoff experience the Hurricanes brought into this seventh straight postseason to show itself on the ice. And this was it: Focused, relentless, punishing. Above all, disciplined. A 4-1 win that could easily have been more, with the Hurricanes pounding out a 45-22 shot advantage.
“We know what to expect in the first game for sure,” Jarvis said. “We have a lot of guys with a lot of experience. We know what to expect, what we’re walking into. Being the aggressor, and being smart with it, definitely helped.”
Unlike all those series in the past, when the Hurricanes got caught retaliating or going too far to make a physical statement, leaving the Hurricanes too often laboring on the penalty kill against the Bruins and New York Rangers and Florida Panthers, the Devils were the ones taking the dumb penalties, making the dumb plays. Timo Meier took out Jackson Blake’s legs way behind the play. Goalie Jacob Markstrom tried to slash Svechnikov and took out his own player, Cody Glass, instead. Dougie Hamilton got away with a cross-check on Svechnikov.
When the Devils weren’t taking liberties, they were “taking on water,” Devils coach Sheldon Keefe’s own description of his third line, a problem Markstrom solved for him by knocking Glass out of the game. Even the Devils’ former Hurricanes with expensive playoff experience — Pesce, Hamilton, Stefan Noesen and Erik Haula (even if Haula’s playoff experience is being frequently eliminated by the Hurricanes) — couldn’t save their younger teammates, frozen in the headlights of the oncoming Hurricanes.
“While we have veterans, we also have a lot of guys who are very inexperienced in this environment,” Keefe said. “Those were some of the guys that were overwhelmed and couldn’t get any real traction in the game.”
Only some curious refereeing that put both Meier and Shayne Gostisbehere in the box kept the Hurricanes from having a 4-2 advantage in power plays or more. The Devils ran around. The Hurricanes ran into them instead, Eric Robinson and William Carrier pounding away on the forecheck, Jordan Staal and Jordan Martinook knocking the Devils all over the ice.
Not coincidentally, the skill on those two lines helped set up Carolina’s two even-strength goals. Jack Roslovic won an offensive-zone faceoff to set up Jalen Chatfield’s opening goal, less than three minutes in, through a Carrier screen. And the second goal was scored by Logan Stankoven, his first of two, off a Martinook feed from behind the net.
“When we get to our game, we can certainly frustrate teams, if we’re going,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “In this building, with the crowd the way it is, we’ve got to give them a lot of props. That is a big deal, when you can get that momentum going and feel that energy. We were ready to go.”
It’s just one game, and as the Hurricanes showed in 2019, being the more inexperienced team isn’t always the disadvantage by the end of a series that it is at the beginning. But it’s also exactly the start the Hurricanes wanted, and needed. An authoritative statement that not only established them as the superior team, but showed the value of lessons learned in the past.
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This story was originally published April 20, 2025 at 7:29 PM with the headline "Hurricanes’ playoff savvy, hard lessons learned on display in thumping of Devils."
