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The Carolina Hurricanes have not had much luck on shootouts this season but luck turned on Tuesday night as Noah Hanifin scored the only goal and Cam Ward came up big, helping the Canes defeat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 in the skills competition at TD Garden in Boston.
Nine previous shooters were unsuccessful, but Hanifin, who used a sneaky backhand move, beat Tuukka Rask for the winner.
Ward has not had that much success over his career in these situations, but did not allow a single goal in the shootout and earned the win by making 35 saves on 36 shots in regulation and overtime as the goalie turned in one of his best performances of the season.
After battling pretty evenly throughout the first period, the Canes went to the dressing room up 1-0 when Jaccob Slavin found the net from just inside the blueline. It was the rookie defenseman's second goal of the season and he notched it with 1:06 left in the opening period.
This was an important game for the Bruins, with playoff implications, so naturally they came on hard in the second period and outshot the Canes, 16-9, but Ward and the Carolina defense were up to the task.
The home team did tie the score when a badly timed Carolina line change created a breakaway. Former Cane, John-Michael Liles found an open Loui Eriksson, who had just exited the penalty box.
The teams battled the rest of the way, including the overtime period, scoreless.
Carolina sent out Riley Nash, Victor Rask, Elias Lindholm, and Sergey Tolchinsky before Hanifin scored his backhander on his first career shootout attempt.
The Canes will return home to take on the Canadiens on Thursday night which will be their final home game of the season.
Game Notes:
- Carolina was outshot 36-28 in this contest. They were led by Jeff Skinner who had four.
- Usually strong in the faceoff circle, the team only won 42% this night.
- The club had 20 blocked shots, led by Slavin who had four. Slavin also had a team high 24:32 of ice time, followed closely by Justin Faulk who had 24:12.
- event summary