The Carolina Hurricanes opened their second-round series against the Washington Capitals with an overtime victory on the road. And the Canes sure deserved it.
After dominating play for much of the game, Carolina found themselves down 1-0 in the late goings, but Logan Stankoven broke through halfway through the third and Jaccob Slavin struck in overtime to seal the come-from-behind victory.
Alex Ovechkin laid a pair of big hits, but the NHL’s all-time leading scorer registered just one shot on net in Tuesday’s series opener.
After Slavin found the back of Washington’s net with a slap shot 3:06 into extra time, fans quietly exited Capital One Arena in Washington.
The series returns there for Game 2 on Thursday, and no doubt fans will be hoping the Capitals come out with more energy and play their game to try to even things up before they head to Raleigh. Here are some takeaways from a Canes-dominated Game 1.
All Canes mostly all the time
Carolina absolutely dominated in categories like zone time and shots on net, with 37 shot attempts in the first period alone as they fired rubber from just about everywhere.
The Canes were a half-step quicker than Washington and controlled the play for long stretches, relentlessly forechecking to limit chances for the Capitals. Washington didn’t register a shot until more than seven minutes in, on a power play, and the Capitals had just five shots in the opening 20 minutes and 2:24 of offensive zone time.
Carolina generated a couple good chances before they struck: defender Shayne Gostisbehere hit a post and Andrei Svechnikov — who scored five times in Round 1 — hit a crossbar twice.
All that hard work from the Hurricanes took a long time to pay off: Carolina had a whopping 94 shot attempts in all, and their 33rd on net proved to be the winner.
Protas strikes first with his first
The Capitals must’ve woken up, albeit briefly, between the first and second periods. Head coach Spencer Carbery summed up the first for ESPN’s Emily Kaplan this way: “We weren’t very good.” Coach nailed it.
But Washington came out firing to start the second: Forcing turnovers, applying pressure, generating chances just like the Canes did in the first. But unlike Carolina, the Capitals were rewarded, and quickly.
Just 3:43 into the second frame, Aliaksei Protas streaked down his off wing and picked the far corner against Carolina netminder Frederik Andersen with a perfectly placed wrist shot, blocker side. It’s the first goal of the playoffs for the 24-year-old from Belarus, who had 30 goals in the regular season. Protas missed the last six games of the regular season and the first four of Washington’s first-round series due to an injury.
In Game 1, he earned time on the top line with Ovechkin and Dylan Strome.
But that was about the extent of the Capitals pressing and playing their game. After the Protas goal, the Canes got back to dominating.
The breakthrough
The Hurricanes tied things up half-way through the third after forcing a turnover in Washington’s zone. Jesperi Kotkaniemi found Logan Stankoven in the slot, and the 22-year-old from Kamloops, B.C., labelled a wrister just inside the post on Logan Thompson’s glove side to tie things up.
Stankoven’s grin said it all: Finally, they’d broken through. It was Stankoven’s third goal of the playoffs. He scored his first two in the first game of the first round. He now leads all rookies in playoff goals.
Paying the price
Carolina was shooting from everywhere, and Thompson wasn’t the only one making stops. Capitals players ate a lot of rubber, too. They had 15 blocks in the first period alone, outpacing Carolina’s game total of 9, and finished the game with 32.
The Capitals did an incredible job of clogging up the middle on Carolina’s power-play and on lengthy periods in their defensive zone. But all those blocks mean they didn’t often have the puck, and that was the story of this game.
Squandered power play, but payoff comes later
The last two minutes of regulation, Carolina had a huge opportunity to win this game after drawing a penalty. But on the ensuing power play, the team that shot all game long got absolutely nothing cooking. Zero shots on net. Zero shot attempts either. You wondered if that would come back to haunt them, but it didn’t.
Slavin’s slap shot that won it wasn’t exactly a boomer, but he took advantage of screens in front and the puck slid under Thompson’s pad. Carolina’s near-relentless pressure finally paid off.
