It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was a strong statement made by a 37-year-old veteran most commonly referred to as "Mr. Game 7".
That would be Carolina Hurricanes captain Justin Williams, who was asked in the lead up to Game 3 of his team’s second-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series against the New York Islanders what he took away from Games 1 and 2.
"I think I take the fact that we grinded out two wins, which is great," he said of games the Hurricanes were out-shot, out-chanced and out-played in. "I also take out the fact that I’m a realist and we haven’t played very well. I think that’s pretty prevalent, and tonight we need to show the Islanders what we’re all about. This is a big game for us. A statement game. A game where we can obviously not put them away but get pretty darned close to the goal that we want. So, in front of our home crowd, we’re going to be ready to go and we’re going to show them what Carolina hockey is tonight."
The Hurricanes were primed to do that. They came flying out of the gate and scored in the seventh minute with their sixth shot—a tap-in at the side of Robin Lehner’s net for Teuvo Teravainen.
It was tight from that point forward, but the Hurricanes were the better team through-and-through. They out-shot New York 38-30, they got the better chances, and they capitalized more often in what proved to be a 5-2 win to take a 3-0 stranglehold in the series.
Guess who scored the all-important third goal for Carolina? Williams. And he played key minutes down the stretch as the Hurricanes locked it down with two empty-netters and held the Islanders to just two shots on net over the final 14 minutes.
Let’s get to our takeaways from Game 3.
[relatedlinks]
Props to Jaccob Slavin
More and more, Jaccob Slavin’s name is being included in the conversation about the best defencemen in the NHL, and he’s more than deserving of that.
The 25-year-old has been Carolina’s best skater in these playoffs. A puck-moving, shot-blocking star who breaks up plays as well as he sets them up. And if you want to know why the team is succeeding as it is, Slavin averaging close to 27 minutes of ice-time per game is a big part of it.
With his 11th assist of the playoffs in Wednesday’s game, he passed San Jose’s Erik Karlsson as the NHL’s leader in the category.
PP Problems
The Hurricanes came into Wednesday’s game having whiffed on 18 straight power plays and only managing three goals on 32 attempts in the playoffs.
They had a sense it would inevitably cost them, and it almost did with two more missed opportunities in this game.
"We had some work on it yesterday, we looked at it again today, and it always comes down to the players on the ice making plays," Williams said just hours before the puck dropped at PNC Arena. "You can have all the systems you want but you’re out there, you’re being counted on by the coaching staff and the other players on the team that you’re the guy that needs to get this done or create something for us or score a power play goal. These are important things and you don’t win a lot of games not winning the special teams battle. We were able to do that, but that’s not a sustainable [path to] success."
Or maybe it is? The Hurricanes have won seven out of 10 games in these playoffs with a power play that’s operating at nine per-cent efficiency. If they keep dominating at 5-on-5, they won’t have to worry about it.
But hey, if they eliminate New York on Friday, they’ll have a number of days to work on the power play, which is a scary prospect for whoever would have to face them next.
Karma’s a You-Know-What
When New York’s Brock Nelson skated by Hurricanes goaltender Curtis McElhinney and palmed his head following Josh Bailey’s second-period goal to tie the game at 2-2, it wasn’t quite on the same level of trolling as Brad Marchand rabbit punching Scott Harrington in Tuesday’s Game 3 loss for his Boston Bruins to the Columbus Blue Jackets.
But you knew it might bite him and the Islanders back before game’s end. Sure enough, Nelson had New York’s two best chances in the third period and they were both coolly turned aside by McElhinney.
And you surely wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Nelson was on the ice for all three goals against later in the frame. That’s karma.
No Offence
Credit McElhinney for allowing just two goals on 47 shots since entering this series for the injured Petr Mrazek, but the Islanders haven’t found a way to score in these playoffs and it’s on the verge of costing them their season.
They came into Wednesday’s game as the lowest-scoring team of the remaining ones in the post-season, averaging just two goals per game. And considering they ranked 22nd out of 31 teams in goals during the regular season, it was somewhat predictable this would be their issue.
But this was only the second game all playoffs that Lehner allowed more than two goals into their net, and with their backs up against the wall one would’ve thought they’d make it far more difficult on McElhinney at the other end.
Carolina’s defence deserves as much credit as its goaltenders, but the Islanders have to be pointing at themselves for their lack of production.
