Return of the Svech: Canes dominate Blues at home

After 67 shots on goal, 19 straight-games dry, and all spanning a two month period, Andrei Svechnikov finally scored another goal.

And he didn’t just stop at one. Svech tallied a second goal soon after the first and nearly completed the hat trick on multiple occasions, but none closer than the attempted lacrosse move that was oh, so close to working.

So if anybody was worried that the fun festivities from Saturday wouldn’t carry over, they were mistaken.

Overall, it was full offensive domination as the Carolina Hurricanes picked apart Jordan Binnington and the St. Louis Blues’ defense at PNC Arena Tuesday night.

The Hurricanes outchanced the Blues 71 to 46 and generated 26 high danger chances total.

It was also a great showing from the new top line that Rod Brind’Amour put together. All four goals came courtesy of the first line of Sebastian Aho (1), Seth Jarvis (1) and Svechnikov (2).

Saturday had Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Martin Necas and Teuvo Teravainen dominate the Capitals and tonight it was the JAS line’s turn to party.

If the Canes are getting Jarvis and Svechnikov rolling, that’s huge for the team, and perhaps less good for those that are hoping for a big deadline move. With just a little over a week till the deadline, the Hurricanes have to figure whether they trust the group or want to go big to add another player to it.

But back to the game, perhaps an underrated aspect of the win was the calm and collected play of Frederik Andersen. The Danish netminder turned aside 35 shots and saved 1.77 goals above expected according to NaturalStatTrick.com.

Since returning from injury, Andersen is 9-1-0 and looks to be riding a steady rhythm at just the right time.

Carolina has been blessed with great goaltending for a large chunk of the season and hopefully that can continue come April.

And as one last nice tidbit, shoutout to old friend Justin Faulk as being the only Blue to score off of a Jesper Fast turnover.

Actually, one more last tidbit. Poor Fast. He’s going to be a meme for the rest of the season for that empty net attempt.

Hopefully he doesn’t frequent social media too much.

But the red hot Hurricanes will look to make it five wins in a row as they host the Ottawa Senators at PNC Arena on Friday night and then the Anaheim Ducks on a back-to-back on Saturday night.