RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 Back in October, Andrei Svechnikov looked like a player searching for himself.<\/p>\n
The explosive winger who can dominate games with his speed, strength and shot spent long stretches looking strangely invisible. The goals didn\u2019t come. The hits weren\u2019t there. The confidence seemed to ebb.<\/p>\n
Coincidentally, when the Hurricanes got to Las Vegas during a long early road trip, Svechnikov was demoted to the fourth line. Coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said he was disappearing too much and they\u2019d need him, especially come playoff time.<\/p>\n
As Svechnikov went the first eight games of the season without a goal on only 15 shots, chatter started throughout the NHL. What the heck was going on? GMs around the league were paying attention, wondering if things could get messier and Svechnikov could be on the move.<\/p>\n
But one person who was not worried \u2014 well, besides Svechnikov \u2014 was Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky. During a sitdown with The Athletic at the team hotel in Las Vegas in late October, Tulsky wasn\u2019t bothered one iota about his top-line winger skating a dozen minutes a night in a bottom-six role: \u201cHe has been a difference-maker in the lineup and will be a difference-maker in the lineup again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thursday night, when the Hurricanes most needed him, Svechnikov scored two power-play goals to help the Hurricanes to a 4-2 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights to drag Carolina to the precipice of its second Stanley Cup title in franchise history.<\/p>\n
In a jubilant locker room after the game, the soft-spoken Canes GM was reminded of that October interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, he\u2019s a great player, he\u2019s extremely skilled, he\u2019s big and strong and physical,\u201d Tulsky told The Athletic. \u201cHe\u2019s the kind of player you need in the playoffs, and whether the puck\u2019s going in the net or not, he can make a difference on any shift. And tonight he showed that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis skills have always been there, and sometimes it\u2019s clicking and sometimes it isn\u2019t. But I was never worried that he wouldn\u2019t come around.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was so impressive about Svechnikov at the start of the season was that as he started getting scrutiny from fans and media, he remained largely positive. After a six-game road trip, Svechnikov returned to Carolina and faced the music of a group of reporters on the morning of a game against, you guessed it, Vegas. He didn\u2019t whine about his role. He didn\u2019t complain about Brind\u2019Amour\u2019s early-season tough love. He made clear he wasn\u2019t about to march into Tulsky\u2019s office and say it was time to move on.<\/p>\n
He simply said he wasn\u2019t good enough and he needed to find his game. But he was not frustrated by his role. He was positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you see me break a stick, then there is frustration,\u201d Svechnikov kidded at the time. \u201cYou stay positive. If you go negative, then it\u2019s going to get worse and worse. So I try to stay positive. It\u2019s fine. Maybe for some (on the outside) it\u2019s a bigger deal. I\u2019m on the fourth line, but for me, it\u2019s not that big of a deal. I\u2019ve been there \u2014 maybe not in the start of the year, but I\u2019ve been there many times, so it\u2019s fine, totally fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that night, Svechnikov scored his first goal of the season and had four shots on goal. He scored the next game, and three games after that, and the next game after that. He finished the regular season with a career-high 31 goals and 70 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an incredibly professional athlete, who from his conditioning to his handling of the media to his handling of game situations, he is extremely mature,\u201d Tulsky said Thursday night. \u201cHe plays with an edge and a lot of emotion, but he still manages to keep his mindset in the right place and make sure that he\u2019s pushing the team forward whenever he can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Svechnikov said after Thursday\u2019s game that those first 10 games of the season were tough.<\/p>\n
But he was proudest of the fact, \u201cI tried to always fight through it, and it doesn\u2019t matter what\u2019s happening (on the outside). And I always try to stay positive, and that\u2019s what kind of happened, and I think I had my best season of my career, and right now as a team we got the best playoffs so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Svechnikov already has 84 playoff games under his belt, and that\u2019s with missing the 2023 playoffs with a torn ACL. Last year, during Carolina\u2019s run to the conference final, he scored eight goals and 12 points in 15 games. But this postseason, he\u2019s been a little quiet, entering Thursday\u2019s game with four goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got it going (in the regular season), and in the playoffs here tonight, I hope this kick-starts him because we need him scoring goals like he did tonight,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said.<\/p>\n
Nikolaj Ehlers assisted on two of Svechnikov\u2019s goals, the second one being a back-door slam dunk where Svechnikov said he knew Ehlers would find him.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, you know what kind of passes Fly can make, but I just worked kind of back door and I knew he was going to make that pass because he just sees everything on the ice, and I just kind of had to stick out my stick there and he\u2019s going to hit it and he did,\u201d Svechnikov said.<\/p>\n
But Svechnikov\u2019s reaction showed how much he was waiting for this breakout, and in such a huge game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the hardest worker of this group, he wants it more than anything, and he continues to try to make himself better and find ways to contribute,\u201d said captain Jordan Staal, who has six goals in five games this series. \u201cThere\u2019s ups and downs in everyone\u2019s careers, and it was a slow start for him, but he continued to build his game this year, and tonight was a big one for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
At his best, the 26-year-old Svechnikov is one of the most physically gifted forwards in hockey, capable of taking over a game almost by himself. At his worst, he can disappear for stretches that leave everyone wondering where Carolina\u2019s most dangerous winger went.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday night, with Carolina unwilling to return to Vegas with a 3-2 series deficit, Svechnikov delivered the first multi-power-play-goal game of his postseason career and the second by a Hurricanes player in a Stanley Cup Final, joining Eric Staal in the 2006 final.<\/p>\n
Every shift seemed to carry purpose. Every puck battle mattered. Every touch felt dangerous.<\/p>\n
For one night at least, Svechnikov authored the kind of June performance Carolina has been waiting for and one Tulsky almost expected way back in October.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the biggest thing in my life, personally, but thank God we won that game and obviously our focus right now \u2026 in our mind, we\u2019ve got one more win to do here and we\u2019re all focused for the next game,\u201d Svechnikov said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 Back in October, Andrei Svechnikov looked like a player searching for himself. The explosive winger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4821,385,99],"class_list":["post-699916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699916","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=699916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}