The Carolina Hurricanes have secured their long-sought shot at breaking through a familiar roadblock in the Eastern Conference final.<\/p>\n
Now the Hurricanes \u2014 the only undefeated team left in the NHL playoffs<\/a> \u2014 are set for another a lengthy wait to get started in the third round.<\/p>\n Carolina beat the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 in overtime<\/a> on Saturday night, becoming the first team to sweep through the first two rounds<\/a> since the league went to best-of-seven series in all four rounds in 1987. That has them back in the conference final for the third time in four seasons and fourth time in the current eight-year playoff run under coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes will face the Montreal-Buffalo winner, a series running through at least Thursday. The East\u2019s top seed had nearly a full week off after sweeping Ottawa in Round 1.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s probably going to be an even longer break this time,\u201d veteran forward Taylor Hall said after Saturday\u2019s win in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big positive is we\u2019re on to the third round relatively unscathed and healthy. You don\u2019t want to see injuries per se, but we hope these series go far and these teams have battles. That\u2019s the advantage we\u2019re going to have. … Rod, our strength staff, all of our staff, do a good job of making sure that we\u2019re ready athletically to play. And from there, we get our footing pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hurricanes have done exactly that since winning the first game of the NHL playoffs on April 18<\/a>. They already have proven they can start quickly after a long break, opening the Flyers series with a dominating first period on the way to a 3-0 win<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a plan, and clearly it was OK,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said, \u201cso we can follow that and run with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Time to recharge<\/p>\n Carolina\u2019s game plan relies on grinding effort and energy: an aggressive forecheck to pressure opponents into mistakes, possessing the puck in the offensive zone and staying there and firing chances at goaltenders and chasing rebounds \u2014 all of which minimizes scoring chances going the other way.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why the benefit of fresh legs and recharged minds has mattered more than the risk of rust so far.<\/p>\n Consider veteran goaltender Frederik Andersen. The 36-year-old Dane had started 32 playoff games for Carolina the past three years and the question lingered as to how much to lean on Andersen with 31-game winner Brandon Bussi also available.<\/p>\n But Andersen has been the best goaltender of the playoffs so far, with a 1.12 goals-against average and a .950 save percentage. He has two shutouts<\/a> and has faced 25 or fewer shots in five of his eight games. Now he\u2019ll get another break to stay fresh.<\/p>\n As Andersen put it: \u201cYou don\u2019t really want to add extra games if you can avoid it.\u201d<\/p>\n Or there\u2019s the case of defenseman Sean Walker.<\/p>\n It was in the hours after Thursday\u2019s Game 3 road win<\/a> that he got the call from wife Taylor back in North Carolina that their first baby was on the way. So, he hopped an early morning flight home for the arrival of a daughter just in time for Mother\u2019s Day. He ate his pregame meal in the hospital cafeteria, then flew to Philadelphia around 2 p.m. Saturday ahead of the 6:15 p.m. puck drop.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to get on the boys and tell them we better win tonight, but I\u2019m really appreciative that everybody dug in,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThe sweep\u2019s huge for everybody. But to take this time to just be with my family is going to be really special.\u201d<\/p>\n Familiar roadblock awaits<\/p>\n Carolina has been elite on the penalty kill, a recurring strength<\/a>, shutting down 38 of 40 chances (95%) while getting a shorthanded goal in Game 3 at Philadelphia. Offensively, the second line of Hall, Logan Stankoven<\/a> and Jackson Blake has been dominant, with 14 goals and 31 points through eight games.<\/p>\n That\u2019s more than offsetting a quiet start for the Sebastian Aho-Andrei Svechnikov-Seth Jarvis top line, as well as a power play that is just 5 of 37 (13.5%) in the playoffs after ranking fourth in the regular season at 24.9%.<\/p>\n Still, the Hurricanes never trailed in their first five postseason games, and have won their last five games with a chance to close out an opponent.<\/p>\n Next comes a familiar roadblock.<\/p>\n Boston swept a happy-to-be-here Carolina team in the 2019 East final<\/a> after the Hurricanes ended a nine-year playoff drought in Brind\u2019Amour\u2019s first season. Florida swept Carolina in 2023<\/a> with four one-goal wins, then beat Carolina in five games<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n Now the Hurricanes get another shot.<\/p>\n \u201cThe season is so long and there\u2019s that 82-game season we talk about that no one really gives much credit to, and yet this team\u2019s played well for eight months,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t just get hot at the end. It\u2019s been night in, night out like this. And that\u2019s the biggest takeaway for me. Probably the thing I\u2019m most proud of about this group is that. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd now, here we are. We\u2019ve got to find a way to get that next step.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Carolina Hurricanes have secured their long-sought shot at breaking through a familiar roadblock in the Eastern Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5107],"tags":[69833,19349,1107,194,29,5176,5,195,510,520,264,1279,3328,4,292,2668,72,1535,6949,43,14,104,1110],"class_list":["post-639990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-hurricanes","tag-andrei-svechnikov-seth-jarvis","tag-brandon-bussi","tag-buffalo","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-carolinahurricanes","tag-hockey","tag-hurricanes","tag-jackson-blake","tag-logan-stankoven","tag-montreal","tag-nc-state-wire","tag-new-york","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-hockey","tag-north-carolina","tag-ottawa","tag-rod-brindamour","tag-sean-walker","tag-sports","tag-stanley-cup","tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-taylor-hall"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117067670091931767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639990","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=639990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}