The Hurricanes were forced to look within, and they found what they needed to find
Long after the celebration and the handshake line, after Rod Brind’Amour was the last of the Carolina Hurricanes to leave the ice, the scoreboard in Nashville still read 3-3, as if the Predators were willfully disbelieving the goal ever happened.
The Hurricanes can’t be counted out. For the second straight game, they came roaring from behind late to force overtime and win it there quickly. This one settled the series.
“There’s no quit in us,” said Dougie Hamilton, who had a tough series at times but rose above all of it in the final game.
It’s almost impossible to quantify the reserves of resilience, patience and defiance that the Hurricanes drew upon in the last two games of this series, especially after the heartbreaking pair of double overtime losses at the same end of this ice where Sebastian Aho, as midnight rapidly approached, tipped a Jaccob Slavin shot past Juuse Saros to end the sixth and final game of this series, 66 seconds into overtime: 4-3, not 3-3.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, the defending Stanley Cup champions, await now, and it’s hard to imagine that series being as closely run as this one was, with the final four games going to a total of six overtimes. But it’s also not hard to imagine the experience of battling for every inch against the Predators will only stiffen the Hurricanes’ spine going into the next round.
“It doesn’t surprise me anymore,” Brind’Amour said. “It’s been like that all year. We’ve played games that aren’t great and it looks like we’re out of it, and they just get it together. We’ve got a special group here. Every coach would say that about their team, but we’re proving it over and over and over. That’s special.”
This was never easy, not in this series, certainly not Thursday. The Hurricanes were pushed to the limit, again and again, only to fight back and rise above. This time, they followed two ordinary-at-best periods with a flamethrowing third, especially after Jordan Martinook knocked Roman Josi out of the game with a big hit in the corner and left the Predators’ defense scrambling.
They missed Slavin, the indispensable defenseman, in the two double-overtime losses. That was obvious then, and never more obvious than it was Thursday. Even before taking the shot Aho deflected for the winner, he set up Dougie Hamilton on the game-tying goal, a clever faceoff play that caught the Predators — weary after back-to-back-to-back icings — cheating away from their net and found Hamilton wide open at the back door.
Jordan Staal won the faceoff back to Slavin, who skated forward along the left-wing boards and got behind the Nashville defense. So did Hamilton, cutting down the slot. Saros was left entirely undefended.
“You play a team this many times in a row, you see how they’re going to react to certain plays we run,” Slavin said. “Right before the faceoff happened, we said, ‘Let’s send both D.’ Dougie ended up being wide-open. It was a nice way to get the game tied up.”
It was a long series, seven games played over the course of six, brutal at times, but it ended in mutual respect. Erik Haula, the Hurricanes’ bete noire, shared a long hug with constant foil Martin Necas and several other former teammates. Brind’Amour lingered on the ice, spending a few seconds with every Nashville player.
There was a sense of survival amid the joy. The Hurricanes did come from behind twice to close out the series. But there was also a sense of destiny to it. The Predators forced the Hurricanes to dig deep, as deep as a team will ever dig in the first round.
When the Hurricanes were challenged to look within, they found what they needed to find.
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 1:20 AM.
