Carolina Hurricanes Bounces Back Against Florida Panthers

After losing to the Philadelphia Flyers earlier this week, the Carolina Hurricanes rebound with a win over the Florida Panthers at home. What happened?

With a four-game winning streak being snapped by the Flyers three nights ago, the Hurricanes came ready with a game plan. That plan must have involved not starting with the lead, so they couldn’t blow it like mentioned in the three keys to the game.

Aaron Ekblad would get the Florida Panthers started with an early goal, cutting to the net with a nasty backhander. Brian Boyle skated in to the front of Petr Mrazek and lifted a perfect shot to put the Panthers up 2-0. Instead of being the victims of blowing a 2-0 lead, the Hurricanes became the perpetrators.

Point-to-point passing looked like a new feature that was improved on from practice. It proved effective in the game, as Brett Pesce would finish a feed from Teuvo Teravainen with a one-timer. Martin Necas would also join in the fun, tying the game up at 2-2 with a one-timer off Dougie Hamilton‘s feed from the point, after playing catch with Jaccob Slavin.

Dougie Hamilton would get a goal of his own, snapping a Teravainen feed from a corner. Andrei Svechnikov would earn an assist from the goal, extending his point streak to seven games.

Sergei Bobrovsky would play out of his mind in the third period to keep the Panthers in the game, but his skaters couldn’t manage to tie the game up. Svechnikov would ultimately put the dagger into the empty net, making it at 4-2 lead, with assists to Teravainen and Sebastian Aho.

Teravainen had a plentiful playmaking night, putting up three assists, three-fourths of the goals were contributions from him. Necas’ goal looked very familiar to his time in Charlotte, where he scored from that spot multiple times, team management could potentially look into that and have the team look for #88 in that spot in the future.

As always, the Hurricanes defense getting involved leads to a win. Hamilton, Slavin, Pesce, and Joel Edmundson contributed into getting points tonight. Hamilton remains second in points on the Hurricanes, with having 3rd place in the most goals of the team, under Aho and Svechnikov.

Although this game looked great, other than the early 2-0 lead by the Panthers, the faceoffs haven’t been the greatest. For the second game in a row, the Hurricanes have the lost the majority of the faceoffs. It hurt them against the Flyers, who usually dominate faceoffs every year, it didn’t hurt them against the Panthers too much. Breaking this habit earlier than later would be ideal, hopefully in Detroit tonight.

With the win, the Hurricanes find themselves back in the driver seat, being back in the top three of the Metropolitan Division. They now pass the Pittsburgh Penguins by a point, trailing the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals.

With a back-to-back game, the Hurricanes have to win again against the Detroit Red Wings in Detroit, right after being in Raleigh against the Panthers. They’ll need this win, just as much as the one against the Panthers.

Question for Cardiac Cane Readers: Will Andrei Svechnikov continue his point streak in Detroit?