*Deep breath*
*Exhales*
*Cracks knuckles*
The Carolina Hurricanes are officially heading to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the sixth consecutive year after completing a sweep of the Ottawa Senators with a 4-2 win in Kanata on Saturday afternoon.
A vicious, violent game came to an end with a regulation win thanks to a valiant effort from a Carolina penalty kill that was asked to dig deep again and again as well as goals from Taylor Hall and Logan Stankoven, who put an exclamation mark
on their respective excellent efforts in the series.
So too did Frederik Andersen, who surrendered just five goals in his four starts against a team that came into the postseason as one of the hottest in the NHL.
The first period went by without any goals or much in the way of incident before the second period became an absolute circus.
The shenanigans began when Tyler Kleven hit Alexander Nikishin hard enough to knock Nikishin out of the game. Andrei Svechnikov was assessed four minutes worth of roughing penalties. Brady Tkachuk received two, so Ottawa got a power play.
I’ll spare the details on the remainder of the penalties in the second period, but one that was not called was a sucker punch from Ridly Greig to Sean Walker while Walker was already engaged with Warren Foegele.
Hall got the scoring started with a nice shot along the ice to beat Linus Ullmark, and Drake Batherson answered for Ottawa with his third of the series to tie the game at a goal apiece heading into the third.
Carolina killed a partial 5-on-3 to start the third, and eventual the power play came through when Stankoven buried his fourth of the series to make it 2-1 and really put the pressure on Ottawa.
Sebastian Aho got his second of the series with an empty-net goal with over two minutes to go. The Sens weren’t done just yet, though, as Dylan Cozens got them one back with his second of the series.
With the game in question again, Jordan Martinook made one of the plays of the series when he stepped into a Tim Stutzle shot that might have been labeled for the net.
That allowed Aho to score his second of the game on an open net, and Ottawa had no further push from there.
Carolina will await the winner of the series between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to determine its second round opponent. The Flyers have a 3-0 lead and are going for a sweep of their own Saturday night.
