Game Recap: Hurricanes Top Blues in Wild Game
By Glenn Brewer
Coming off a solid OT victory in Pittsburgh to start the six-game road trip, the Carolina Hurricanes continued the road trip in St. Louis.
The team looked to continue their winning ways with Antti Raanta in between the pipes.
Raanta is coming off a solid performance in a victory at home against the Calgary Flames where he got the win with 18 saves.
The Scoop
The first period began with a solid pace of play and strong offensive zone pressure from the Hurricanes. Jordan Binnington made sure the game remained scoreless.
The Hurricane’s forecheck and neutral zone press caused a few turnovers that led to some quality scoring opportunities.
No better of opportunity for the Hurricanes was for the captain in front of the net after being fed a great pass by Jesper Fast.
Despite the strong road period, the Hurricanes gave up a late power play that the Blues quickly took advantage on a goal by Pavel Buchnevich.
The start of the second period traded some good chances for both teams but the Blues once again capitalized on a scoring chance.
Noel Acciari used a screen by Jaccob Slavin and wristed one past Raanta to put what appeared now of the game to be out of reach.
Then the chaos began!
The Hurricanes went on the power play and got a much-needed goal from Brent Burns, with a shot from the point.
After that, the Hurricanes brought the puck right back to the Blues net, and Jordan Martinook wristed one past Binnington to tie the game.
Before you could finish celebrating the Martinook goal, Seth Jarvis entered the offensive zone and wristed one top-shelf past Binnington to take the lead.
The wildness of the period continued as both teams traded strong chances and one shot that trickled past Raanta, but Calvin De Haan made a heads-up play clearing the puck as it approached the goal line.
The Blues went back to the power play and took advantage once again with a goal from Torey Krug.
The wild second period ended in a tie.
When both teams returned to the ice for the start of the third period, the Hurricanes had a new player in the net. Pyotr Kochetkov took over for an injured Raanta. He finished the game with 10 saves.
The period went by with a little number of stoppages and whistles.
Enter Martinook, playing in his 501st NHL game. Martinook took a puck in the neutral zone and skated alone over the blue line where he was met by the Blues defense.
Martinook had just enough speed to get by and get off a sneaky shot to beat Binnington five-hole.
The Hurricanes stood tall and kept the Blues outside the scoring zones and eventually were rewarded with an empty net goal by Jordan Staal.
That would have been too normal for this crazy game against Eastern and Western Conference teams.
The Blues captain, Ryan O’Reilly, put the Blues within striking distance with a late one-timer goal from the bottom of the circle.
This made things interesting, but even more interesting was the final empty net goal completed by none other than Martinook to complete the hat-trick.
Down by two goals in the second period, the Hurricanes came back and beat the Blues by the score of 6 to 4.
A gritty and gutsy road performance by Rod Brind’Amour’s group as they start the road trip with two exciting victories.
Now they have a little break before they head west to face the Los Angeles Kings.