After that, we locked it down pretty good.
I thought that chance by Jack Eichel off the draw was a good one but other than that we didn’t give them a ton when it was 6-on-5.
Bussi was incredible. I think, for him, coming in last game, that was a great, great thing for him. It kind of took a little bit of the nerves out of him a little bit. I don’t think we need to beat around the bush. At the start of the year do you think he was thinking he was going to start in the Stanley Cup Final, probably not.
He had an incredible year for us, and it was almost unfortunate that he didn’t get a chance to play in the playoffs, but Freddie was playing phenomenal. Freddie goes down and we know we have an incredible goalie right behind him. I thought he was exactly what we needed tonight, made big saves at big moments. That’s what you want.
Obviously, we knew how important this game was. Three-one is a lot different than 2-2. Now it turns into a best-of-3 with two home games in Raleigh. That’s something we like. We like playing in Raleigh. We like playing in front of our fans. We know it is a hard place to play.
We will get home, see our families and get ready to play. It’s a quick turnaround to play on Thursday, but it was a quick turnaround between Game 2 and Game 3.
We train all year for moments like this. We’re going to have a lot of energy. It’s the biggest series of your life; you aren’t going to be tired at all.
It’s survival of the fittest this time of year and we hope we are the fittest.