With tired legs and stout hearts, Canes defensemen pull yeoman duty in Game 2 win
When the word came down that Jaccob Slavin would not be available for the second game of the playoffs, Brady Skjei figured his ice time would go up a little as the Carolina Hurricanes adjusted for the absence of their workhorse defenseman.
Then the penalties started coming, one after another. At least two were certainly embellished by the Nashville Predators, but the others weren’t, and Skjei kept going back over the boards on the penalty-kill — over and over again.
It was going to be a long night for those two anyway with Slavin out. It didn’t help that the Hurricanes had to kill seven Nashville power plays.
“It seemed like more than seven,” goalie Alex Nedeljkovic said afterward.
And it did.
By the time the Hurricanes finally closed out the 3-0 win Wednesday night to take a 2-0 series lead, Skjei and Brett Pesce were on either side of the 28-minute mark, seeing almost half of the minutes available to the Carolina defense.
That’s not how it was drawn up on paper Wednesday afternoon, but that’s what it took to win a playoff game. These are the sacrifices that must be made, the extremes that must be surmounted. That duo was put to the test, and merely a passing grade isn’t good enough at this time of year.
“I figured with (Slavin) being out, I might go up a little bit in ice time,” Skjei said. “Obviously, the PK was a big part of that reason. It was a solid game. Once you get in the flow of the game, you’re not even thinking about ice time. You’re just kind of playing. That was kind of my thought process going through it. I thought we did a really good job.”
In some ways, their yeoman effort epitomized the Hurricanes’ Game 2 performance: Not always elegant, but in the right place at the right time, again and again.
It’s easy to look at the scoreline and think, OK. Simple enough. A three-goal win and a Nedeljkovic shutout. But it was a one-goal game until the final minute, when Sebastian Aho sealed the win with an empty-netter and Warren Foegele added a freebie off a defenseman’s skate.
It was never easy. It was a slog.
“It wasn’t pretty, right? First two periods, no flow, not a good game, I felt,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We couldn’t get any traction. We had some guys we couldn’t get on the ice because they didn’t kill penalties. Very strange flow to a game.”
And for Pesce and Skjei, it was a marathon. It took everything they had. They were the last line of defense, and when that line faltered, Nedeljkovic was up to the task. Whether it was staying big in his crease early or making a glove save on Luke Kunin from the splits with the Hurricanes clinging to a one-goal lead, the rookie showed no signs of the early jitters from Monday’s playoff debut.
He was especially good in the third, when the Predators finally gathered some momentum at even strength and applied consistent pressure, only to give it back to the Hurricanes when the Predators went on the power play. The Hurricanes actually outchanced the Predators while down a man, with an Aho breakaway as the best opportunity.
That might have been good for another Aho playoff hat trick. As it was, Aho potted a pass from Andrei Svechnikov on a first-period power play to start the scoring and thought he finished it in the third. Coming on the heels of the rare playoff game when Aho was kept off the scoresheet, it was the kind of two-way performance the Hurricanes have come to expect from Aho.
The Hurricanes have come to expect similar things from Slavin on the blue line, and their long-term prospects are considerably dimmer without him available. Skjei and Pesce ably filled the void Wednesday, but the Hurricanes were noticeably slower in the third period and struggled to get out of their own zone — whether because of fatigue on the part of Skjei and Pesce or rust on the part of other defensemen thrown into a tense situation without their legs fully under them.
This worked Wednesday, but it’s probably not sustainable, not that giving the opposition seven chances with the man advantage ever is. Skjei and Pesce will sleep well after this. Brind’Amour may not.
These are the demands playoff hockey makes on everyone. So far, the Hurricanes have had the answers.
