Petr Mrazek, the forgotten goalie, takes his shot to save the Hurricanes’ season

It got to the point where Petr Mrazek started to wonder if he’d play at all. His stop-and-start, injury-plagued season had left the door open for Alex Nedeljkovic to claim the crease, and once Nedeljkovic got the job for the Carolina Hurricanes in the playoffs, he didn’t really let go.

Mrazek was the forgotten man, a goalie in search of a net to defend with the best seat in the house.

“I was just trying to be ready as much as possible,” Mrazek said. “See if I get a game.”

So he watched the entire first round against the Predators, and he watched the Hurricanes drop the first two games of this series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, until Hurricanes goalie coach Paul Schonfelder pulled him aside Wednesday to tell him his time had finally arrived. Even Rod Brind’Amour wasn’t sure how that would go, but the coach also knew he was running out of options.

“I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest with you,” Brind’Amour said afterward, when he could have taken a victory lap and claimed he knew what was coming all along. “He’d been out for so long, but he’s a battler.”

Did Mrazek ever battle. With the Hurricanes facing all but certain elimination, Mrazek was retrieved from the where-are-they-now-file, gave up two slam-dunk power-play goals and stopped everything else he faced, keeping the Hurricanes in it long enough for Sebastian Aho and Jordan Staal to combine on (yet another) overtime goal for a 3-2 win.

Mrazek was last seen giving up five goals in the May 10 dead rubber against the Nashville Predators, backstopping a half-strength lineup in a meaningless game. The Hurricanes planned on rotating goalies, but Nedeljkovic got the first shot and his strong play in that series relegated Mrazek to a door-opener on the bench and baseball hat model.

But down 2-0, the time had come to see what the other guy had. And like Martin Gerber’s sudden resurgence in the 2006 conference finals -- coming from goalie oblivion to briefly relieve Cam Ward long enough to pitch a key road shutout in Buffalo -- Mrazek back-stopped the Hurricanes right back into this series.

Among his 35 saves were two critical stops in overtime, when the Lightning carried 53 seconds of power play over from regulation. He was able to stop Brayden Point and the dynamic Nikita Kucherov to keep the Lightning from the immediate kill shot. He then hung in long enough for Kucherov to take a dumb penalty -- trying to water ski behind Martin Necas while the Lightning had the Hurricanes pinned in their own zone -- and the Hurricanes to convert on an overtime power play of their own.

Mrazek did everything asked of him, and more.

“I’m not even surprised,” Aho said. “He has that: When he gets hot, he gets very hot. It’s what you need in the playoffs, to have a hot goalie.”

The Hurricanes have one now, as suddenly and precipitously as they’ve gotten back in this series.

They needed something, anything to shake something loose against the Lightning. The Hurricanes were running out of time, and almost as important, they’re running out of bodies. Warren Foegele became the latest absentee, leaving the game in the third period after taking a hard hit to his left shoulder late in the second.

With Foegele, Vincent Trocheck and Nino Niederreiter all out, that’s 47 regular-season goals removed from the lineup of a team that’s already struggling mightily to score.

The Hurricanes finally got a couple of even-strength goals Thursday night -- their first five-on-five goals and first lead of the series -- only to give up power-play tap-ins on both penalties they took. When the Lightning power play is moving like a tremendous machine, even against the best penalty-kill in the postseason, all you can do is get out of the way. And stay out of the box.

Tampa needed all of 82 seconds to score the two man-advantage goals, barely breaking a sweat. But the Hurricanes relied on Mrazek not only to kill the last at the most important time, but save their entire season.

“I wouldn’t call it pressure,” Mrazek said. “It’s fun to play, especially playoffs. Those moments are forever.”

The Hurricanes will go into Sunday’s game with confidence, a puncher’s chance to go home for Game 5 tied 2-2 and a goalie who went from invisible to en fuego when his team needed him most.