RALEIGH, N.C. — For the second straight yr, the Carolina Hurricanes didn’t win a sport of their final post-season sequence till on the sting of elimination.
This time, it ended their season in one other Jap Convention last — the stage proving to be a roadblock of their multi-year Stanley Cup push.
The Hurricanes fell 5-3 to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night time in Sport 5, sending the Panthers again to the game’s last stage for the third straight yr whereas ending Carolina’s newest prolonged playoff grind wanting the last word objective.
And it ended in a similar way to the earlier yr: with Carolina dropping the primary three video games of a sequence, spending a number of video games making an attempt to dig out of that large gap after which dropping a two-goal lead at house within the sport that finally ended their season.
“I believe primarily we misplaced within the first few video games,” Carolina captain Jordan Staal stated. “You possibly can’t begin a sequence like that and count on a greater end result.”
A yr in the past, it was an 0-3 sequence deficit to the Presidents’ Trophy-winning New York Rangers within the second spherical. The Hurricanes regrouped to win two elimination video games and carried a 3-1 lead into the third interval of a Sport 6 at house, solely to see the Rangers surge again behind Chris Kreider’s hat trick within the last 20 minutes in a 5-3 victory.
This time, it was a 0-3 sequence deficit to the reigning Stanley Cup champion, a examined and deep workforce unafraid to play and surpass Carolina’s aggressive forechecking method. And it ended with an identical last rating.
“We knew it was going to be an enormous job to attempt to beat them,” stated Carolina’s Sebastian Aho, who had two first-period targets Wednesday that put the Hurricanes forward. “We really consider we have now what it takes, however clearly we fell brief but once more.”
By the ultimate horn, Carolina’s lamentations went again to dropping the primary two video games at house, the second being a 5-0 blowout wherein the Panthers had been shockingly dominant and the Hurricanes’ usually rowdy followers had been left to frustratedly chant “Shoot the puck! Shoot the puck!”
“These first two video games you’d in all probability need again, but it surely’s too little, too late,” stated Seth Jarvis, who had a tying objective halfway via the third interval earlier than Florida made its go-ahead transfer on Carter Verhaeghe’s rating. “And that is form of the results of it.”
By Sport 3, Carolina had seen a 1-1 sport getting into the third mushroom right into a 6-2 loss for his or her fifteenth straight loss in a convention last going again to sweeps in 2009, 2019 and the 2023 one towards these Panthers. The Hurricanes regrouped to win Sport 4 on the street and avert one other sweep, however they confronted a protracted climb to perform the unbelievable.
Carolina jumped to a 2-0 lead with Aho twice placing Panthers giveaways within the impartial zone into the web behind Sergei Bobrovsky. However the Panthers flurry of three targets on consecutive second-period photographs — two coming in a 30-second span — erased that deficit and silenced a roaring crowd giddy by Carolina’s begin.
Whereas the Hurricanes responded with Seth Jarvis’ tying objective halfway via the third, the dynamic of the sport had fully modified after a flurry coach Rod Brind’Amour known as “a backbreaker.”
“You would simply really feel us — it is simply pure, the constructing, every thing, it form of sucked just a little little bit of life out of us,” he stated.
Carolina’s five-week playoff push had included five-game sequence wins towards the New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals, the latter being this yr’s high seed within the Jap Convention. But the Hurricanes went from going 5-0 at house in these two sequence to dropping all three house video games towards the Panthers.
Carolina has received not less than one post-season sequence in its present run of seven straight playoff appearances, although three have now ended within the Jap last.
“We have had sluggish begins within the sequence, when it will get to the highest 4 groups, they’re nice groups, and having a sluggish begin isn’t nice,” Staal stated.
“Clearly we all the time consider within the group after we get right here and arising brief isn’t simple, and it would not get any simpler. We’ll simply attempt to get higher and check out once more.”
