MONTREAL \u2014 In two of the last three postseasons, the Carolina Hurricanes had short stays in the Eastern Conference final.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re one game away from another \u2014 and they\u2019re enjoying this one a bit more.<\/p>\n
Carolina beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-0 in Game 4 at the Bell Centre on Wednesday, pushing their series lead to 3-1 and moving within one victory of a matchup with the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Final.<\/p>\n
A three-goal first period Wednesday fueled the Hurricanes, who turned the territorial dominance they\u2019d established in Games 2 and 3 into a multi-goal lead against a desperate opponent. The early advantage allowed them to tighten the screws even more against the Canadiens, whose first shot of the game didn\u2019t come until more than eight minutes after puck drop.<\/p>\n
The start unfolded exactly as the Hurricanes hoped.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you gotta find the body blows to get to the head,\u201d forward Logan Stankoven said. \u201cWhen you can stack shifts and set up the other guys for success, good things will continue to happen.<\/p>\n
By the end of the period, Carolina held a 3-0 lead and a 12-5 edge in shots, and the gap only increased as the game progressed; Carolina finished the game with 43 shots to the Canadiens\u2019 18. Montreal didn\u2019t log a shot on goal in the third period until 2:55 remained.<\/p>\n
It might have been the strongest game of the postseason for the Hurricanes, who swept the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers before dropping Game 1 to Montreal by a score of 6-2. They\u2019ve charged back since, putting themselves 60 minutes from their first Eastern Conference title since 2006. They\u2019ve lost in this round three times since, including in four games to the Florida Panthers in 2023 and in five games last year.<\/p>\n
Carolina\u2019s first-period goal scorers were Sebastian Aho, Jordan Staal and Stankoven. Andrei Svechnikov added an empty netter. Nikolaj Ehlers assisted on Aho\u2019s and Staal\u2019s goals, and goaltender Frederik Andersen made 18 saves.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time these playoffs the Canadiens have had their season on the line; they won Game 7 twice in the first two rounds. But a 3-1 deficit is a challenge this group has not faced since the first round of last year\u2019s playoffs, when they lost Game 4 on home ice to the Washington Capitals before losing Game 5 on the road, a game they also trailed 3-0 before finally losing 4-1.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the losing that should bother the Canadiens \u2014 the Hurricanes are an extremely difficult opponent \u2014 but the repetitive nature of the losses should be of some concern to this young team and its bench boss, Martin St. Louis, coaching his fourth career playoff series.<\/p>\n
The one repetitive thing that is most encouraging for the Canadiens is the continued excellence of rookie goaltender Jakub Dobe\u0161, who celebrated his 25th birthday with 39 saves, including stopping breakaways by Jackson Blake and Seth Jarvis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we\u2019ve been underdogs the whole season, the whole playoffs,\u201d Dobe\u0161 said. \u201cSo we are a super underdog right now. We\u2019ll got to Carolina and try to win Game 5, come back and try to win (Game 6), and hopefully we\u2019ll get to Game 7.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carolina, meanwhile, wants to end things at home Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have them right on the edge, you want to push them off,\u201d Stankoven said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to let them hang around. That fourth game to win is always the toughest. So, we\u2019re going to expect their best, and we\u2019re going to have to come ready to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurricanes dominate first with three quick goals<\/p>\n
For the first time in this series, the goals came in a big ol\u2019 bunch for Carolina, as all three of the Hurricanes\u2019 top centers tallied in a span of just 2:47 late in the first for their first three-goal lead of the series.<\/p>\n
Aho scored first on their second power play of the game, a questionable hooking call on Zack Bolduc that the Canes\u2019 top unit made very short work of via a cross-ice one-timer with five minutes left in the opening frame.<\/p>\n
Staal made it 2-0 a minute and change later by winning a big boy net-front battle with Josh Anderson to pound in his second of the playoffs and continue his line\u2019s dominance over the Canadiens.<\/p>\n
Then Stankoven recorded his first point of the series by capping a two-on-one off a pass from Blake as the wheels started to come off for Montreal. Only 17:46 into the game, it was 3-0 \u2014 and the Canadiens had a massive hole to dig out of. \u2014 James Mirtle, senior NHL writer<\/p>\n
Where was the Canadiens\u2019 adjustment to Hurricanes\u2019 forecheck?<\/p>\n
The Canadiens registered their first shot on goal at 8:07 of the first period, by which point the Hurricanes already had six.<\/p>\n
Going back to the third period of Game 3, from the moment Noah Dobson was credited with a shot on goal at 10:06, the Canadiens registered one shot on goal in 32:57 of game time, or more than half a game\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n
But perhaps more important than the lack of shots in the first eight minutes is that, at least by our rudimentary count, the Canadiens already had seven failed zone exits by that point. That was really the story of the opening period for the home team, and has been the story of the series over the past three games.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens\u2019 inability to clear the puck from their own zone under the relentless Hurricanes forecheck was going to be the biggest adjustment we would see in Game 4. Or so we thought.<\/p>\n
And nowhere was it more evident than on the Hurricanes\u2019 second goal. It would be easy to look at Anderson\u2019s inability to tie up Staal in front of the net as the main reason for that goal, but while the culprit would be correct, the moment would not be. That came several seconds earlier, when Anderson had the puck on his stick not far from the blue line in the defensive zone and took a moment to think about what to do with it. In that moment, the Hurricanes took the puck off his stick and went back to work in the offensive zone.<\/p>\n
And just like that, the Canadiens\u2019 issues in this series were summed up in one play, with a nice, pretty bow on it. \u2014 Arpon Basu, senior Canadiens writer <\/p>\n
Score effects or a positive line shuffle?<\/p>\n
Score effects are most definitely a real thing. A team that is up three goals will play differently, and so will a team that is down three goals.<\/p>\n
When St. Louis shuffled all four of his forward lines to start the second period, however, already down 3-0, and the Canadiens suddenly became far more dangerous, it was hard not to wonder why he began the game with the same line combinations as in the previous three games.<\/p>\n
Considering the Canadiens put 10 shots on goal in the second period alone after putting up 13 and 12 in the previous two games, which each went to overtime, it is a fair question.<\/p>\n
The speed of Alex Newhook next to Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield gave that line a jolt, Bolduc playing with Phillip Danault and Anderson created a fast, physical line, and Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd had a lot of success in the middle of the regular season playing left wing on a line with Ivan Demidov.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the changes will bode well in Game 5 with their season on the line, but maybe Game 4 would have been different had the Canadiens either started this way or in any different way from the previous two games, which went so poorly for them.<\/p>\n
The bump from the changes, however, did not even carry over to the third period, let alone Game 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like we got a jolt, I liked our second, I felt like we had to kill big penalties, too, and it gave us momentum,\u201d St. Louis said of the changes. \u201cUnfortunately we just couldn\u2019t execute in the third.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a little under seven minutes left in regulation and the Canadiens sitting on zero shots on goal in the period, the Bell Centre fans briefly chanted \u201cShoot the puck! Shoot the puck!\u201d which, it should be clear, is not a great look, especially if this was the Canadiens\u2019 final home game of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not fun to hear that,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cBut they\u2019re not wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Basu<\/p>\n
Miller time<\/p>\n
Wednesday wasn\u2019t the first postseason game in which K\u2019Andre Miller was the most attention-grabbing Hurricanes defenseman, but it might\u2019ve been his best.<\/p>\n
Miller earned a primary assist on Staal\u2019s goal, Carolina\u2019s second of the first period, by carrying the puck from the blue line to the goal line, going wide on Danault. That drew Dobe\u0161\u2019 attention away from the traffic in the crease \u2014 and Miller, with plenty of space between himself and Danault, banked the puck off Staal\u2019s skate back toward the Canadiens\u2019 net.<\/p>\n
It was a slick play, the sort of thing Miller does with some degree of regularity, and it certainly came at a crucial moment for the Hurricanes, giving them a two-goal lead and setting them up to tighten the screws on Montreal. Miller\u2019s shift-in, shift-out performance has been a bigger deal, though; his skating and reach are elite, and he\u2019s used both to regularly erase scoring chances by all three of Carolina\u2019s postseason opponents, including several by Montreal throughout Game 4. Carolina, of course, acquired him from the New York Rangers in the offseason for first- and second-round picks and defenseman Scott Morrow.<\/p>\n
Miller, 26, flashed potential with the Rangers but also struggled at times, playing for three coaching staffs and frequently being deployed in matchup minutes with mismatched partners. In him, the Hurricanes saw a player who could thrive in their system, and he\u2019s done just that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe kind of does it all,\u201d Aho said. \u201cHe skates really well. He has really good offensive instincts, as well. He\u2019s been a great player for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Sean Gentille, senior NHL writer <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 In two of the last three postseasons, the Carolina Hurricanes had short stays in the Eastern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4821,1787,385,99],"class_list":["post-670307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670307","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=670307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}