Andrei Svechnikov and Jordan Staal scored first-period goals as the Carolina Hurricanes topped the Utah Mammoth 4-1 on Saturday in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
With the victory, Carolina (52-22-6, 110 points) moved four points up on the idle Buffalo Sabres for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Carolina and Buffalo each have two games remaining.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Aho and Sean Walker also tallied while Nikolaj Ehlers, Jordan Martinook and Shayne Gostisbehere added a pair of assists each for the Hurricanes, which have won three straight and improved to 23-12-4 on the road this season.<\/p>\n
Frederik Andersen made 26 saves in his first career appearance and win against the Mammoth.<\/p>\n
Dylan Guenther scored for the Mammoth (42-31-6, 90 points), and Karel Vejmelka stopped 26 shots as Utah\u2019s five-game win streak ended. The Mammoth hold the top wild-card spot in the Western Conference, leading the Kings by three points. Both teams have three games to play.<\/p>\n
Utah cut Carolina\u2019s lead to 2-1 on a power play at 2:42 of the third as Guenther one-timed a cross-ice feed from Clayton Keller for his team-leading 40th of the season.<\/p>\n
The assist extended Keller\u2019s point streak to seven games (four goals, 12 assists), while Guenther has six goals and seven assists in his last seven contests.<\/p>\n
Carolina took a 3-1 lead at 15:30 of the third as Aho redirected a Gostisbehere point shot past Vejmelka for his 27th of the season.<\/p>\n
Walker added an empty-netter for the Hurricanes at 19:37 of the third.<\/p>\n
Svechnikov opened the scoring at 4:15 on a power play, backhanding the rebound off Ehlers\u2019 shot past Vejmelka for his 31st of the season.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes doubled its lead at 13:23 of the first as Staal one-timed an Ehlers\u2019 feed past Vejmelka for his 20th of the season.<\/p>\n
Utah defenseman John Marino sat out with an upper-body injury and is considered day-to-day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrei Svechnikov and Jordan Staal scored first-period goals as the Carolina Hurricanes topped the Utah Mammoth 4-1 on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5107],"tags":[194,29,5176,5,195,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-550706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","10":"tag-carolinahurricanes","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hurricanes","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116388928148576895","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}