There are so many questions and so few answers.
On Friday night, the Carolina Hurricanes hosted the New York Islanders in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
After giving up an early goal to Mathew Barzal, the Canes responded with five straight goals to advance to the third round with a 5-2 win and four-game sweep of the Isles.
“This means a lot to a lot of people,” Carolina captain Justin Williams said. “It means a lot to me, it means a lot to everyone here, everyone watching at home, everyone on the radio. And it means a lot to our players as well.”
Curtis McElhinney made 26 saves to get the victory.
“You think about [how] we’ve had success all year, it’s being able to shut down other teams,” New York coach Barry Trotz said. “Counter, frustrate them, all that. They did a lot of that to us. When you’re pressing, we usually counter, and they did that against us. We were chasing the whole series.”
After that opening goal from Barzal, the Canes responded with goals from Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen to take a 2-1 lead.
“Obviously we knew it was going to be a tight game,” McElhinney said. “To get a couple extra goals and sit with that lead going into the third felt great.”
Teravinen’s strike, early in the second period, was followed Greg McKegg and Justin Williams for a 4-1 lead.
“We came out and imposed our will on them early (in the second period), scoring a goal,” Williams said. “You just have to create doubt in them, and we did that at the start of the second and carried it on. And McElhinney, as usual, not suprised, he was there when we needed him, made some big saves and it was great.”
Andrei Svechnikov added a goal early in the third period for a 5-1 Carolina lead.
“I’m just so proud of these guys, I can’t even tell you,” Carolina head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We had a good push, and that was enough. All the games in the series, we never felt like we could get to our game for any length of time, but there were segments, and we were able to capitalize on those kind of time frames.”
Brock Nelson closed out the scoring with a goal late in the third period to make the final score a little more respectable.
[WATCH: All Islanders vs. Hurricanes Game 4 highlights | Complete series coverage]
The Islanders, and a few other teams, proved this post season that the regular season record means nothing once the 83rd game of the year is played.
The Isles breezed past the Pittsburgh Penguins in what was a laugher of a series and the turned around and lost to a spirited Carolina squad who exposed the Isles’ porous defense and limited offensive capability.
This series cannot be blamed on the goaltending though Robin Lehner should sue for non-support.
Lehner made 11 saves and yielded three goals before being given the hook in the middle frame.
“I know myself, I felt really good coming in,” Lehner said. “It was kind of a weird first period, but they came out flying in the second period, and that was that.”
Thomas Greiss made nine saves after relieving Lehner.
“Goals had been pretty hard to come by in this series, and we couldn’t let it get past three,” Trotz said. “I just felt that hopefully it could quiet it down, maybe guys would focus in for [Greiss]. We just couldn’t get close enough in the end.”
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