The Carolina Hurricanes overcame the strong defensive performance of the Arizona Coyotes, winning 2-1 to keep their undefeated streak alive.
The Carolina Hurricanes kicked off Halloween with a suspense-filled match that saw them overcome the Arizona Coyotes with a late, third-period goal to win 2-1 at PNC Arena, Sunday afternoon.
As we all know, patience is a virtue and nobody had to learn that more than the Canes.
Despite outshooting the Coyotes and outchancing them by almost double, a stellar goaltending performance by Arizona’s rookie netminder, Karel Vejmelka, gave the Hurricanes more than a few reasons to get frustrated.
And to top it all off, the Hurricanes had conceded the first goal of the game fairly early as well, after the Coyotes applied the pressure with some extended offensive zone time.
Ethan Bear and Vincent Trocheck each failed to clear the puck from the zone and eventually Christian Fischer beat out two Hurricanes along the boards and drove straight to the net, stuffing the puck five-hole on Frederik Andersen.
The first period saw Carolina as the better team in every aspect but the one that matters. Despite three power play opportunities, the Canes couldn’t find gold as the passes were connecting, but Vejmelka was denying all of the shots.
The Coyotes continued to stall the Canes’ attacks through the second period, but, with frustrations mounting some relief was found.
Off a set play from a faceoff win, Martin Necas loaded up and blasted the puck from the blueline where a lucky deflection off a Coyote’s player sent the puck past Vejmelka, top shelf.
The goal gave the Hurricanes enough breathing room to loosen the grips on some of their sticks and the next period saw the Canes’ asserting even more dominance.
The Coyotes were just trying to hang on in the third period against the Hurricanes’ onslaught as wave after wave of Carolina chances were coming, but they were all being turned aside by Vejmelka.
However, patience paid off once again as Svechnikov, who the Coyotes had tried to goad into taking a retaliatory penalty all afternoon, instead drew a late infraction against Jakob Chychrun.
And the Carolina power play only needed 17 seconds — on their fifth attempt at the man advantage — to seal the win.
The second unit started the power play, won the faceoff and with a little passing to set up the lane, Brett Pesce blasted the puck through to give his team the lead.
Seth Jarvis, who was playing in his first NHL game, picked up the secondary assist on the goal for his first NHL point.
Carolina shut the door from there and Andersen continued his dominant start to the season, picking up the win in his 400th career game with a 0.957 save percentage.
The Hurricanes are now 8-0-0 and will head back onto the road as they look to build the streak to nine games in Chicago on Wednesday night at 8:30 p.m.