RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes put a 35-year-old goalie in web and welcomed again their teenage draft decide. One other younger star arrange their graying captain’s tiebreaking aim.
That mix of younger and previous has the surging Hurricanes on the verge of a sweep.
Sebastian Aho assisted on Justin Williams’s key aim with 9 minutes 45 seconds remaining, and Carolina beat the Islanders, 5-2, on Wednesday evening to take a 3-Zero lead of their second-round sequence.
Teuvo Teravainen had two objectives, together with an empty-netter with 57.1 seconds remaining, and Aho added one other empty-net aim with 4.eight seconds to play. Justin Faulk additionally scored for the wild-card Hurricanes, who moved to the verge of the Jap Convention finals of their first playoff look in a decade.
After dropping the primary two video games of their first-round sequence towards Washington, they’ve received seven of eight and can attempt for the sweep Friday evening.
“The subsequent sport’s at all times the hardest,” Coach Rod Brind’Amour mentioned. “They’re not going to go away. We all know that. These video games have all been tight — one-goal video games, basically, and it’s going to be like that on Friday.”
Josh Bailey had a aim and an help and Devon Toews scored on the ability play to jolt the Islanders’ slumbering offense, nevertheless it wasn’t sufficient to maintain the workforce from a precarious spot. Solely 4 groups in N.H.L. historical past have received a sequence after dropping the primary three video games. The final to do it was Los Angeles, towards San Jose within the first spherical in 2014.
“It’s an enormous mountain, however we’ve dug in lots of instances this yr when individuals doubted us,” Islanders Coach Barry Trotz mentioned. “So we’re simply going to need to dig in.”
Curtis McElhinney — who at 35 years and 343 days grew to become the oldest N.H.L. goalie to make his first playoff begin — stopped 28 photographs instead of Petr Mrazek, who’s day after day with a lower-body damage. After McElhinney made two bang-bang saves within the second interval whereas doing a break up, the group chanted his first identify.
The rookie wing Andrei Svechnikov, a 19-year-old who had been within the concussion protocol after taking a punch from Alex Ovechkin in Recreation Three of the Washington sequence, returned to the lineup for Carolina.
Robin Lehner stopped 34 photographs for the Islanders, however his profession file towards the Hurricanes fell to 0-7, with three of these losses on this sequence.