{"id":632984,"date":"2026-05-09T14:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T14:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/632984\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T14:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T14:31:12","slug":"ehlers-showing-a-little-different-flair-with-hurricanes-1-win-from-eastern-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/632984\/","title":{"rendered":"Ehlers showing ‘a little different flair’ with Hurricanes 1 win from Eastern Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Otherwise, Carolina has been firmly in control, with a tight defensive structure and goalie Frederik Andersen<\/a>\u00a0teaming to limit opponents to eight total goals in their seven wins, including not more than two in any of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been great,\u201d Ehlers said. \u201cThis opportunity, you don’t get it that often, and to be in the playoffs is special, so it’s a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ehlers has played beyond the second round of the playoffs once in his NHL career. That came in 2018 when the Jets lost to the expansion Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like during the regular season, when he was limited to four assists in his first 11 games, Ehlers started slowly in the postseason, with one point in his first four games — an assist on Martinook\u2019s winning goal in a 3-2 overtime win in Game 2 against Ottawa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Ehlers, who missed Game 4 against the Senators with a lower-body injury, found other ways to help the Hurricanes when he wasn\u2019t scoring and now seems to be finding his offensive game with three points (two goals, one assist) in the past two games.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of speed, a lot of skill, but also plays the game the right way,\u201d Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cI think he’s been fantastic for us all year. Even early on, when he didn’t necessarily score or be on the score sheet, you could tell he\u2019s eventually going to score, and he’s been big for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ehlers recovered from his slow start to the regular season to finish second on Carolina with 71 points (26 goals, 45 assists) in 82 games, behind Aho, who had 80 points (27 goals, 53 assists) in 79 games. It was the ninth time in the past 10 seasons Ehlers scored at least 20 goals and the sixth time he reached 25.<\/p>\n

Playing on the third line with Staal and Martinook is probably not what the Hurricanes, or Ehlers, envisioned when he signed with them. It has turned out to be a good fit, though, and he\u2019s more than held his own defensively when that line is matched against opponent\u2019s top lines, which it often is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to go out there and do anything I can to help this team win every single game,\u201d Ehlers said. \u201cSo yes, we do have different roles. Everybody has a slightly different role. But at the same time, we all need to do the same things to help this team win, and we’re prepared to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Otherwise, Carolina has been firmly in control, with a tight defensive structure and goalie Frederik Andersen\u00a0teaming to limit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-632984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}