The Carolina Hurricanes took Game 1 of the qualifying round, defeating the New York Rangers 3-2 yesterday afternoon.
I was surprised to see how physical the game was early on, with the teams trading hits, as well as a fight between Ryan Strome and Justin Williams. It was fun to watch, though a ridiculous number of minor penalties over the remainder of the game left a good chunk of the action being played with special teams.
The Hurricanes took the play to the Rangers in the first period and New York realistically didn’t get a good scoring chance until probably almost halfway through the game. The entire top line looked great for Carolina and were getting the majority of the team’s chances, especially early on. I also thought Vincent Trocheck looked really good again today. He was comfortable carrying the puck into the offensive zone against multiple defenders and made some chances out of nothing on individual efforts. Martin Necas also looked decent, staying in the game and scoring a goal, despite taking two hard hits in the first period.
On defense, everyone looked fairly good. Brady Skjei delivered some nice hits and even though Sami Vatanen still concerns me a bit while handling the puck at the point, I thought he looked better yesterday than in the exhibition game. In net, both Henrik Lundqvist and Petr Mrazek played well and neither can really be faulted for the goals they gave up.
One key is that the Hurricanes didn’t give up a goal to the Rangers on any of New York's seven power play opportunities. Special teams were a problem for Carolina against New York this year, but the Hurricanes won the battle in Game 1.
Overall, it was a great game for the Hurricanes. They didn’t give the Rangers much to work with, controlled the majority of the game and most importantly, finally beat New York.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
Which of Carolina's deadline acquisitions were you most impressed by in Game 1?
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