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.

2nd Period:

The 2nd period would see the remainder of the scoring last night, as the Capitals tied up the game on an Alex Ovechkin power play goal. Teuvo Teravainen took a hooking penalty about midway through the 2nd period, that led to Ovechkin’s powerplay one-timer.

Teravainen would shortly redeem himself, however. Nino Niederreiter fed Teravainen the puck from the boards as he was blasting down the wing, easily beating Holtby on the short side to break the tie and net the game-winning goal with 28 seconds left in the period.

https://twitter.com/NHLCanes/status/1119040539544948736

That is a beauty of a goal isn’t it? And critical. Thanks to that goal, the crowd was immediately a returning factor in this game. Without this goal, who knows what might have happened in the third that would have given Washington the momentum and a series lead.

The 2nd period would see yet again quite a few solid saves by both Mrazek and Holtby, and only saw one more penalty. Capitals’ defenseman John Carlson took a holding penalty that the Hurricanes would not be able to convert on.