About Last Night: Canes Come Out Ahead In Stadium Series Preview

In a game that did not follow the Carolina Hurricanes’ normal script — they were outshot 36-30 and were dominated in the faceoff dot 58.6% to 41.4% — the team still managed to outpace the Washington Capitals and hold off their Metro rival to take a 3-2 win Tuesday night at Capital One Arena.

In front of many of their Dad’s and Mentors who made the trip with the team, the Canes got back into the win column.

Good Enough

The Hurricanes were by no means the best they’ve been, but they were good enough to win with the Capitals missing a few key players, namely Alex Ovechkin, John Carlson and Tom Wilson.

The Hurricanes surrendered a lot of Grade-A chances throughout the evening, 14 high-danger chances against according to NaturalStatTrick.com.

In fact, both of the Capitals goals came off of odd-man rushes up the ice, which isn’t a promising sign given that almost all of the Rangers’ goals from the last game were due to giving up odd-man rushes.

However, last night, goaltender Frederik Andersen stood tall for his team, stopping 1.75 goals above expected according to MoneyPuck.com.

Brent Burns picked up his 11th goal of the year tossing the puck through heavy traffic in front, Paul Stast-Knee struck again as a Calvin de Haan shot ricocheted in off of it, and Stefan Noesen got the power play heated up again.

Special Teams Prevails

While the Capitals had an edge in power play opportunities, it mattered not as the Hurricanes’ penalty kill was stalwart, keeping Washington scoreless on all three of their man advantages.

The Hurricanes even had to kill off two sequential penalties to Andrei Svechnikov and Martin Necas late in the second period to preserve their lead.

While Carolina had only a single power play, they made it count as Stefan Noesen potted his 10th goal of the year to give the Canes a perfect special teams night.

It was the quintessential power play goal.

Cycle the puck out to the top, get somebody in front and they redirect it in past the goalie.

Easy as that.

Streaks and Milestones

• Brady Skjei played in his 500th career game. He played 307 of those with the New York Rangers and 193 with the Carolina Hurricanes.
• Stefan Noesen tied his career high in points with 27 in just 50 games played this season. He previously set that mark in 72 games with the New jersey Devils in 2017-18.
• Teuvo Teravainen is now on a four-game point streak with two goals and two assists in that span. He now has nine points in his last 10 games.