In Raleigh, Anti Raanta made 25 saves on Monday night to lead the Hurricanes to a 2-1 win over the New York Islanders in Game 1of their first round, Easter Conference playoff series.
“It’s nice to get ahead obviously and play with the lead,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “That game went pretty much how we thought it would. They made great saves, we had good saves. Both teams were going pretty hard.”
Game 2 is set for Wednesday night in Raleigh.
“A couple shots I couldn’t see, but our guys were blocking those,” Raanta said. “In the first period, I got a couple good saves to get [me] into the game. Most of the time, we played really well in front of the net, so I just needed to make the first save.”
Sebastian Aho scored off the power play with just 3:47 gone in the game for a 1-1 lead to the Canes,
“Obviously, it helps. Big goal,” Aho said. “Gives you a little confidence. I felt the power play was good tonight overall.”
The goal came off a one-timer from the right circle.
The game stayed that way into the middle frame when Carolina doubled the lead to 2-0 on another power play goal, this one by Stefan Noesen.
Noesen tipped a shot from Brent Burns’ shot for the blue line.
“The puck didn’t stay on our sticks too long,” Carolina’s Martin Necas said. “It’s all about confidence. You get a couple touches on the power play, and the guys who are supposed to play with the puck more get the feeling of 5-on-5 better. It was good momentum on the power play.”
The Hurricanes were 2-for-4 on the power play.
“They came hard,” New York defenseman Noah Dobson said. “Once you got [past] the nerves, I thought we settled into the game [at] 5-on-5 well. In the second period, we had some really good zone shifts. There’s not much space out there. We’re going to have to create it ourselves, but there’s some stuff in that game we can build on.”
New York crawled back into the game 24 seconds later when Ryan Pulock scored to trim the Isles deficit to 2-1.
“I thought there was certainly some positives to the game,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “Got better as the game went on. We just have to get ready for Game 2.”
The Islanders were scoreless in eight power play chances.
Ilya Sorokin made 35 saves in Islanders loss.
New York’s Mathew Barzal returned to the lineup after missing 23 games with a lower body injury.
“We were without Barzal for a long period of time, and when we had him, we had some success,” Lambert said. “We had some good looks certainly early on in the power play. We had some chances to score and just couldn’t find the back of the net.”
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