Carolina Hurricanes: Takeaways from Game 4

The Carolina Hurricanes have tied up the series against the Washington Capitals with a second straight win tonight in Raleigh. Today, we take a look back and breakdown Game 4, period by period.

The Hurricanes are holding their own against the Washington Capitals in Round 1 of the playoffs. After dropping the first two games in Washington, the Hurricanes rallied and have played two very solid games in Raleigh, solidifying their position in the series, and setting themselves up for success heading back to Washington on Saturday.

The Washington Capitals have been absolutely stymied by the Hurricanes’ physical prowess of late, and have seemingly failed to come up with a way to handle Hurricanes’ surging rookie forward Warren Foegele.

Not only have the Capitals not been able to keep up with the Hurricanes on the ice, they haven’t found a way to overcome the electricity that the crowd has brought to the PNC Arena this past week.

Game 4 was an absolute rollercoaster. The Hurricanes scored in the first 17 seconds of the game, lost yet another forward to injury early on in the game, the Capitals suffered an injury of their own, and there were more than a few penalties on both sides. Today, I’m going to break down Game 4 period by period and point out the highs and lows of each, starting with the 1st Period.

1st Period:

The first period saw the fastest goal scored by the Hurricanes in recent memory. Jaccob Slavin found Warren Foegele with a beautiful cross-crease pass that Foegele was able to expertly shoot past Capitals’ netminder Braden Holtby shortly after the opening puck drop. If the crowd wasn’t loud enough already, they definitely were after the rookie forward scored his third goal in two games.

The excitement for most of us in the Arena and watching at home would soon turn to dread, as Jordan Martinook took an awkward angle into the boards after glancing a body check off of Dmitry Orlov in the Hurricanes offensive zone.

Martinook was helped off the ice, and returned shortly before the 1st intermission to skate around a bit. Martinook seemed to be favoring his right leg, and was soon sent back to the locker room, where he would remain for the rest of the game.

The remainder of the period would remain relatively uneventful, but with beautiful saves by both Petr Mrazek and Braden Holtby interrupting the spans of solid back-and-forth hockey. The Hurricanes would finish up the 1st period leading by one goal.

3rd Period:

The 3rd period is easily going to go down as one of the most intense periods the Hurricanes have played this season, despite there being absolutely no scoring all period. Both the Hurricanes and the Capitals had quite a few solid scoring chances, but Mrazek and Holtby stood tall in both ends.

There were quite a few intense moments in the 3rd period, especially closer to the end of the period, but perhaps the most tense of these was Warren Foegele’s boarding penalty on Capitals’ forward T.J. Oshie.

Foegele was beaten down the wing by Oshie coming into the offensive zone, and pushed Oshie at an odd angle into the boards. Oshie went down and was clearly in a significant amount of pain. The Capitals’ forward was then helped to the tunnel and missed the remainder of the game. The injury now seems to end Oshie’s season.

This fired the Capitals up, and fueled an extremely intense late-period offensive push. Holtby was pulled, giving the Capitals a man advantage for the remainder of the game. Mrazek was unflinching, however, as he made an absolutely clutch series of doorstop saves in the waning seconds of the game to propel the Hurricanes to a win, thereby tying the series up at two.

The Hurricanes were outshot in every period, whilst being down yet another forward and still managed to pull together a win and tie up the series. With Andrei Svechnikov expected to return to the lineup for Game 5 in Washington, the Hurricanes are poised to take their first postseason series lead since 2009.

Question for CC Readers: Do you feel Warren Foegele’s boarding penalty on T.J. Oshie should be disciplined further? Why, or why not?