RALEIGH, N.C. – Rod Brind'Amour had just watched his Carolina Hurricanes skate through a debacle of a first period, putting them in a three-goal hole on a night they had a chance to advance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs on home ice.
So what was he hoping to see in the second period?
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“Anything,” he said matter-of-factly.
He got it and more, all the way through to Sebastian Aho's ticket-punching goal that finally buried the New Jersey Devils.
Aho hammered a one-timer past Jacob Markstrom at 4:17 of the second overtime to help the Hurricanes beat the Devils 5-4 on Tuesday night to clinch their first-round playoff series in five games.
Aho's score off a feed from Shayne Gostisbehere came with the Hurricanes on a four-minute power play on a double-minor high-sticking penalty by Dawson Mercer that sent Jesperi Kotkaniemi skating off to the tunnel with a towel to his right eye. Aho provided the capper, the only lead Carolina would have in a wild game that pushed them into the second round.
“Unreal," Aho said. “Obviously you almost like black out for a second there. The crowd goes nuts, guys are jumping on you and it's unreal. Yeah, really good feeling.”
Carolina is the first team to advance to the second round, and next faces the winner of the Montreal-Washington series. The Capitals lead 3-1 in that one.
The Hurricanes are also the fourth team in league history to win a series in seven straight postseasons, first since the Montreal Canadiens went 10 straight from 1984-93.
The Devils skated out to a 3-0 lead in the opening 10 minutes, only to see Carolina erupt for four goals in a chaos-filled second period to level the game. But things settled down into a tough grinding finish for the third period and extra periods, capped ultimately by Aho's second goal on the power play on the night.
Aho also had the goal that tied it 4-4 with 8:33 left in the second period with the Hurricanes holding a two-man advantage.
Taylor Hall, Jackson Blake and Andrei Svechnikov also scored for Carolina, which is one of four teams in the playoffs for at least seven straight years. But the Hurricanes are the only one of that group to win at least one postseason series each time.
“Proud of the group for digging in,” Brind’Amour said. “I think it could’ve been easy to go, ’Well, it’s 3-nothing, we’ve got two more games we could play (to advance). But they didn’t.”
“That's just not the way we are,” said the 21-year-old Blake, who squeezed one shot between the left post and Markstrom's right shoulder for his first career playoff goal. “I think it's really cool the way we won tonight, so it was awesome.”
It also marked the second time in three seasons that the Hurricanes had eliminated the Devils in a five-game series that ended with a sudden-death goal in Raleigh. The other came in the second round in 2023.
The Hurricanes had won the first two games of this series at home, while the Devils punched through in two overtimes to win Game 3. But Carolina put New Jersey on the brink with Sunday’s Game 4 win after taking a 3-0 lead and losing starting goalie Frederik Andersen to an injury on a skating-in hit by Timo Meier.
The injury-riddled Devils gave Carolina fits on its home ice in Game 2 and again in Game 5, only to come up empty
“We played two pretty good road games in Games 2 and 5 here, so to not get one is tough," first-year Devils coach Sheldon Keefe said. “But I thought our guys gave everything they had. We were on fumes in overtime. But our guys just kept fighting, hanging on, Marky's battling. So there's lots to like about it.”
Mercer, Timo Meier and Stefan Noesen scored during New Jersey’s game-opening flurry, then Nico Hischier added a second-period goal for a 4-3 lead that provided a brief pause to Carolina's avalanche.
Markstrom regrouped from that rough second period to finish with 49 saves for the Devils, operating as a one-man survival raft in the first overtime as Carolina put shot after shot on the net with a chance to advance riding on each one — including Carolina’s Seth Jarvis ringing the left post with about 4 1/2 minutes left in the first OT.
Carolina finished with a 34-12 edge in shots after the second period to put Markstrom under constant duress. He made 38 consecutive saves between Aho’s tying and winning goals, the with the latter having him bang his stick to break it against the pipes and then the ice as Aho skated to the other end amid a roaring celebration.
“That first overtime, man, we were under siege," Keefe said. "And he was outstanding and gave us a chance to keep fighting.”
Pyotr Kochetkov finished with 31 saves in his first start of the postseason for Carolina.
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/NHL