RALEIGH, N.C. – Put the brooms away.
All good things must come to an end, at least for the New York Rangers, and they did in droves on Saturday night at PNC Arena when the Carolina Hurricanes got themselves right back in the Eastern Conference Round 2 series with a 4-3 win in Game 4 to avoid the sweep.
That snapped the Blueshirts’ seven-game winning streak to start the postseason.
Snapped Igor Shesterkin’s streak of 30 straight games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs of having allowed three goals or less.
And Brady Skjei’s game-winner with just 3:11 left in regulation against his old team on the power play finally got his team on the board on the man advantage, something that felt like it played a big role in Carolina’s three straight one-goal losses to start the series.
But, even having been unsuccessful in their first 16 power plays this series, Hurricanes Rod Brind’Amour wasn’t too particular in how his team managed a win, just that they got the job done.
“I don’t care,” he said. “We’ve just got to get W’s this time of year.”
It is, of course, just one “W” for a team that still needs three more, but it also felt like the kind of win that could potentially turn the momentum in favor of the Hurricanes in what’s been a very tight series; each contest has now been decided by just one goal.
“You can’t win four games tonight,” Brind’Amour said. “You can’t even think about it, but you can just go do your job. We’ve been doing a pretty good job of it, and I haven’t been at all disappointed with how we’ve played…we live to fight another day, that’s the most important thing.”
Skjei, who played his first four-plus seasons in the National Hockey League with the Rangers before being dealt to Carolina in exchange for a first-round pick on February 24, 2020, broke through with a one-timer from a few feet inside the blue line through traffic that beat Shesterkin cleanly up high. He seemed a bit more optimistic than his coach that the way his team won might have some carryover effect once the series shifts back to Madison Square Garden for Game 5 on Monday night.
“Nice to finally get one on the power play,” he said. “Obviously, it was a huge goal at the time…just moving forward, if we can keep playing well on the power play, it’s going to be a huge part going forward in this series. We know that their power play is strong, and we’ve got to try to match that, if not do better.”
On the Rangers side, there was a certain inevitability that, yes, they were eventually going to lose this postseason. While the way they lost was certainly frustrating – fighting back from a two-goal deficit only to give up a late goal – overall, they weren’t entirely displeased with the way they played as a whole.
“It’s tough,” said Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette. “We dug ourselves a hole early, and I don’t think it was because we weren’t ready to play; the chances were probably seven-six or six-six, something in that area, it wasn’t a lot, but the ones that we gave up were pretty noisy…we’ve got to come out a little bit sharper than that. We were working, we were competing, we were trying to do our job offensively, but there’s some things defensively that felt like they could have been a little bit in the first period.”
With the series heading back to Manhattan, the Rangers are also hopeful that playing in that kind of environment – one they haven’t lost in this postseason, of course – can perhaps help provide that early boost.
“You always want to come out as fast as you can,” said Rangers captain Jacob Trouba. “I think going back home, we’re going to have a pretty rambunctious crowd. It’s going to be a fun game to play. The attention now goes to Game 5.”
