RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Carolina Hurricanes battled through the regular season to claim the Eastern Conference's top seed for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Yet the coming weeks will determine whether this season is considered a success, starting with a best-of-7 series against the Ottawa Senators.
This is the eighth consecutive playoff appearance for the Hurricanes, whose active postseason streak is surpassed only by Colorado and Tampa Bay at nine years.
So regular-season success isn't new. Nor is postseason success with 10 series wins in this run.
But they've hit a familiar ceiling, falling in the Eastern Conference final in two of the past three years and thrice in the current playoff streak. Now they'll try again to play their way back to that position, then take that final step.
“They've all worked for 10 months to get to this point to have this opportunity," coach Rod Brind'Amour said. “We just want to put our best foot forward.”
The first-round tussle, with Game 1 set for Saturday, pairs teams with very different recent histories.
Going back to the 2020-21 season, Carolina is second among all NHL teams behind Colorado in points (632) and regulation wins (238). Meanwhile, the Senators ranked 20th with 484 points and 173 regulation wins in that span. They're back for a second straight postseason, with last year’s team losing a six-game first-round series to Toronto. Before that, Ottawa had languished through a seven-year postseason drought following a seven-game loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2017 Eastern Conference final.
But the Senators won five of six to secure a wild-card spot, a run that began with a 6-3 home win against the Hurricanes. They clinched their trip with a 3-0 win against the New York Islanders on April 11, followed by Detroit's regulation home loss to New Jersey later that day.
“Last year, we were playing good hockey at this time of the year, too," Ottawa center Claude Giroux said. "We’re not shooting ourselves in the foot. We just have confidence in how we’re playing and that we’re going to give ourselves a chance to win.”
The Senators were 15th out of 16 teams in the Eastern Conference on the morning of Jan. 25, and their playoff hopes looked dire. They won 20 of their next 29 games to clinch a spot for a second consecutive season.
“We’ve talked a lot about just embracing pressure and wanting the pressure,” coach Travis Green said. “Good teams that win Stanley Cups, they want pressure. There’s going to be pressure to win. And when you get into the playoffs, we learned a lot last year about our group, about our game. They feel comfortable in their game.”
Captain Brady Tkachuk, Selke Trophy-caliber forward Shane Pinto and top defenseman Jake Sanderson are all a big part of that. The biggest factor is goaltender Linus Ullmark, who went 6-2-1 down the stretch to get Ottawa into the postseason.
Carolina finished second in the NHL by averaging 3.55 goals, with its 291 goals marking the most for the franchise since relocating to North Carolina before the 1997-98 season. The Hurricanes are the league's only team with seven players having scored 20-plus goals.
Going back to Jan. 25, Ottawa ranked fifth by averaging 3.58 goals in 31 games and finished eighth in the regular season, led by Tim Stutzle (34 goals) and Drake Batherson (33).
The Hurricanes' penalty kill could represent a special-teams edge. Carolina ranked 11th in the regular season by stopping 80.5% of power plays, while the Senators were 29th out of 32 teams (75.7%) and last among any team to reach the postseason.
Carolina ranked fourth with the man advantage by scoring on 24.9% of its power plays, while Ottawa was eighth at 24%.
Brind'Amour hasn't named a Game 1 starter between veteran Frederik Andersen (16-14-5, 3.05 goals-against average) and Brandon Bussi (31-6-2, 2.47), who went from waiver pickup to earning a three-year extension through the 2028-29 season in February.
Andersen, with 32 starts in the past three postseasons, improved after the Olympic break (9-4-0, 2.70). Bussi cooled from a 23-3-0 start that saw him have a 2.16 GAA, posting a 3.16 GAA after the break.
One positive for Bussi: he finished strong, posting a 1.44 GAA and .943 save percentage in season-closing games at Philadelphia and the New York Islanders.
Carolina hosts the first two games, with Game 2 set for Monday. The series shifts north to Canada's capital city with Game 3 next Thursday and Game 4 on April 25.
If necessary, the series would return to Raleigh for Game 5 on April 27, move to Ottawa for Game 6 on April 30 then conclude at Carolina with Game 7 on May 2.
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AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
