About Last Night: Hurricanes down Jets 4-2

A cold start wasn’t enough to stop the Carolina Hurricanes Thursday night, as they erased a two-goal deficit to cruise to a 4-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets at PNC Arena.

As always, let’s have a look at the good and the bad from last night:

The Good

• Seth Jarvis continues to have a fantastic rookie season and continues to exceed any realistic expectations that anyone could have had for him. His third period go-ahead goal was a testament to his fearlessness, as he battled his way to the front of the net and got rewarded with a rebound and an empty net. There’s not many teenagers Jarvis’ size that repeatedly get to the dirty areas, but he continues to persevere and continues to get rewarded for it. On top of all of his skill and world class skating ability, the kid has a massive heart.

“He’s been great,” said Rod Brind’Amour. “You’ve got to remember how he’s new to the league, young kid and he’s not a big guy, so there’s a lot going against him, but he’s definitely maturing before our eyes. He’s earned his spot in the lineup and he’s definitely earned his ice time.”

• Andrei Svechnikov has found another gear this season, with his true power forward-type ability starting to shine consistently. His impact was on full display in the third period, with his heroic solo-effort in the offensive zone that resulted in Jaccob Slavin’s tying goal. When Svech is locked in and feeling himself, he’s virtually unstoppable. He quite literally does whatever he wants out there — both physically and with his skill. He continues to be a real treat to watch.

“He’s a special player,” said Jaccob Slavin. “We’ve always known it. Even when he was a rookie in the league, he had that ability. He’s just getting smarter — and he’s always had poise — but just continuing to get better and more confident. He plays a hard game so it’s always nice as a defenseman to give someone like that the puck.”

The Bad

• Brendan Smith. I mean, how and why is this guy still in the lineup? I get that he’s a well-respected veteran and he plays hard and physical, but the guy can’t do the single most important thing in hockey — skate. He just can’t move. It’s a mystery how he’s getting ice-time ahead of Ethan Bear, or even Jalen Chatfield at this point.
• Slow starts continue to plague the Hurricanes, as they fell behind 2-0 in the first period and looked pretty flat overall despite doubling Winnipeg’s shots on goal. Suffice to say, if the Canes hope to put together a long playoff run — then they really need to start showing up for games on time. You can’t be playing from behind so frequently.

“There’s lots of ups and downs in hockey,” Slavin said. “And Roddy’s pregame speech before the game today was ‘what are you going to do when bad things happen?’ So, not off to a great start, but we stuck with it and it just teaches resiliency and that’s what you need, especially going into the playoffs. The more we can get that, the better chances we have.”

What’s Next?

The Hurricanes have an afternoon back-to-back coming up on the weekend, with a trip to New Jersey to face the Devils on Saturday and then over to the Island to meet the Islanders on Sunday.

With Frederik Andersen still out of the lineup, it’s extremely possible that we see the much anticipated debut of Pyotr Kochetkov in one of the two games, which should be worth the price of admission alone. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see how he looks in his first taste of NHL hockey — assuming that he gets the nod.