Canes send series back to Raleigh with win
Fat Lady?
I didn’t hear no Fat Lady and neither did the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes were finally able to get to their game and got a shut out performance from Fred Andersen in goal as they defeated the Florida Panthers, 3-0 on Monday night at Sunrise, Florida.
After a tight and scoreless first period, the Canes started to control play by not allowing a shot-on-goal for about 14 minutes.
Midway through the second period, highly touted rookie Alexander Nikishin, flicked a perfect pass to Logan Stankoven who was streaking into the Florida zone.
Stankoven made no mistake, roofing his shot over Sergei Bobrovsky to make it 1-0, for the first lead of the series for Carolina.
It was Stankoven’s 5th goal of the playoffs.
The Canes outshot Florida 12-5 in that second period.
The Panthers managed to ramp up some pressure of their own in the third but the Carolina defense battled them for every inch of ice, especially Jaccob Slavin who played 28 minutes.
Nikishin played 18:53 and was credited with 5 hits, tied for the team lead with Jarvis who also had 5.
The Canes added two empty net goals, one by Aho and one by Staal to close it out.
Andersen made 20 saves on the 20 shots he faced for the shutout.
Both teams will return to Raleigh for game five and I would expect a more spirited game by Florida but the home team will have some momentum and anything can happen.
Game Summary – https://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20242025/GS030314.HTM
Event Summary – https://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20242025/ES030314.HTM
Team’s Recap – https://www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/recap-canes-shut-down-cats-in-game-4