And though it\u2019s a system that results in eye-popping defensive and goaltending numbers — the Hurricanes held the Montreal Canadiens to just five goals and 67 shots on goal in the final four games of the Eastern Conference Final — it\u2019s not just the Carolina defenseman making it happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt starts with the forwards,\u201d defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere<\/a>\u00a0said during the Eastern Conference Final. \u201cYou see the extended shifts they have. Their (Canadiens) D are trying to do everything they can to break the puck out, and you know it\u2019s continually just turnover after turnover, and it\u2019s a momentum builder.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see each (line) just setting up the next line, going out and doing more of the same. It\u2019s kind of just sticking a fork in them in a sense that you just keep doing the same thing over and over again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A perfect snapshot of the what the Hurricanes do came in the third period of their 4-0 win in Game 4 of the Conference Final on Wednesday in Montreal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Already leading 3-0, the Hurricanes got the puck into the Canadiens zone and kept in there for 1:34, winning seven puck battles, never allowing Montreal to touch the puck, let alone get in out of the zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t get a goal, but exerted their dominance nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gostisbehere displayed another key to the system, sacrificing his body to block a shot by Lane Hutson<\/a>\u00a0in the first period of Game 4. He not only blocked the shot, the puck went back the other way off of the defenseman\u2019s leg and started a 2-on-1 the that resulted in a Carolina goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another example of every player on the ice, every player in the lineup, doing what is necessary to win.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all pulling on the same side of the rope, we\u2019re all the same players in a sense that we\u2019re going to do whatever we have to do to win,\u201d Gostisbehere said. \u201cYou look at (center Sebastian Aho<\/a>), you look at the skill guys, they\u2019re blocking shots, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n * * * *<\/p>\n Though Brind\u2019Amour is the evil genius behind the system, the message to play that way, the only way to play in Carolina, is reinforced by captain Jordan Staal<\/a>\u00a0and the leaders on the roster, like Aho and defenseman Jaccob Slavin<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt only works if the guys in the room are going to push the message that the coaches are pushing,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cIf the leaders are saying maybe there’s a better way or a different way, then everything’s going to go sideways.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that’s every day that I’ve been here, never had that issue, you know? Our leadership group is like, \u2018This is how we do it,\u2019 and nothing that you know coming from me. I laid it out, but they have to buy into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Take Seth Jarvis<\/a>\u00a0for example. The 24-year-old plays on the Hurricanes\u2019 top line with center Aho, who is nicknamed ‘Fish,’ and Andrei Svechnikov<\/a>, but that hasn\u2019t always been the case. Selected by Carolina with the No. 13 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, Jarvis played the 2020-21 season with Chicago of the American Hockey League and Portland of the Western Hockey League.<\/p>\n When he joined Carolina for the start of the following season, he said it didn\u2019t take him long to assimilate into the system, because he had no other choice.<\/p>\n \u201cRoddy proved or showed me that if I wanted to stay on the team, stay in the lineup, that I had to kind of adapt that way pretty quickly,\u201d Jarvis said. \u201cAnd it wasn’t like I started on the first line and all this stuff, I started on the fourth line, and kind of in that role you forecheck hard and you hound pucks, and you create your offense from there.\u00a0<\/p>\n “So starting that early in my career, I think helped a lot, just getting used to being hound on pucks and making their defense uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And though it\u2019s a system that results in eye-popping defensive and goaltending numbers — the Hurricanes held the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-704941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}