Canes pushing to force Game 6 at home vs. Rangers: ‘They know it’s going to be hell here’
There are several different ways to look at Game 5 of the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup playoff series with the New York Rangers.
Canes center Evgeny Kuznetsov, who can look at things a bit differently, had this one:
“It’s going to be a dogfight,” Kuznetsov said Sunday. “There’s one bowl of food and two dogs are going to compete (against) each other.”
An interesting analogy. And come game time Monday at New York’s Madison Square Garden, it could be accurate.
Win Game 5 and the Rangers will end the best-of-seven Eastern Conference series. Lose, and it’s back to Raleigh for a Game 6.
“They don’t want to come back here,” Kuznetsov said. “They know it’s going to be hell here.
“What we want to do is put the pressure on them a little bit and play our game. There’s not a lot of tactics or skill plays. It’s just about compete and the dogfight.”
The competition level spiked during Game 4 on Saturday. The Canes led 2-0 in the first period and then 3-1 after the first, only to have the Rangers get it to 3-2 and then tie it 3-3 in the third to make it a seat-squirmer for many in PNC Arena.
Kuznetsov, who scored the Canes’ first goal of the playoffs against the Islanders, scored the first goal in Game 4 against the Rangers. He sniped a shortside shot past goalie Igor Shesterkin barely two minutes into the game to get PNC Arena rocking early.
“That’s the kind of impact he can have on a game,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Sunday. “It just takes one play.”
After Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s hit on Barclay Goodrow caused a turnover along the wall, Kuznetsov snagged the loose puck and let it rip from the top of the left circle. Seeing some Rangers fans seated near the glass, it gave it a big swat with his stick.
That’s what Canes fans were expecting when Kuznetsov was acquired from the Washington Capitals at the NHL trade deadline — a crafty, veteran center and former NHL All-Star who won a Stanley Cup ring with the Caps and would be invaluable for his playmaking and scoring potential in the playoffs.
Instead, Kuznetsov was made a healthy scratch by Brind’Amour in Game 2 of the Rangers series in New York. No one expected that.
Brind’Amour more or less dismissed it later as nothing major, saying forward Max Comtois had played well in practice and he wanted to give Comtois a look. In other words, simply a coach’s decision.
“I thought we needed a little more boost in type of player,” Brind’Amour said Sunday.
Kuznetsov, for his part, said little about it Sunday other than, “It is what it is.”
“It’s probably a conversation for another day,” he added. “Right now we just have to forget all of those past days and just focus on the future.”
The Hurricanes will go to New York with one nagging concern out of the way: an inability to score on the power play against the Rangers’ active penalty killers. After 16 straight misses in the series, the Canes got a power-play blast from defenseman Brady Skjei in the third period for a 4-3 lead as Carolina handed the Rangers their first loss of the postseason.
The Rangers had just one power play in the game — five total penalties were called — and did not score as the Canes easily killed off a Jordan Staal tripping call in the first period.
“We had pressure and we were on it,” Canes forward Jordan Martinook said. “I think that was just the intensity of the game at that point and everybody was in it. It was a big, big moment in the game for us to be able to get that killed off the way we did it.”
Injury update: Pesce skating
Brind’Amour offered a bit of good news Sunday when he said defenseman Brett Pesce, who suffered a lower-body injury in Game 2 of the Islanders series, was skating again.
Brind’Amour also said a Pesce return in the Rangers series was “very doubtful.”
