In Elmont, the Carolina Hurricanes’ Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Jordan Staal scored early in the third period on Saturday night to break open a tight game with the New York Islanders.
The two markers gave the Canes a 3-0 lead.
“I loved the third period,” Brind’Amour said. “We’re up by one, just kind of put the hammer down and just kept playing our game. It was a solid two points for sure.”
Pyotr Kochetkov made 16 saves and protected the advantage for the shutout win.
“Just a great effort. I’m really proud of the group,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Obviously, we’re missing a ton of quality players that we count on every night. Everybody just played really well and understood what we had to do to win this game.”
Carolina improved to 15-6-6.
“They were on top of us. They had an answer for everything we tried to do,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “Certainly, when you’re coming off a back-to-back, you can’t turn the puck over like we did. We didn’t get to our game at all.”
New York dropped to 17-12-2
“Guys were working, (but) we weren’t able to break any of their pressure,” Islanders captain Anders Lee said. “A lot of times they were right up on us. We weren’t able to get it past them enough to sustain any pressure. They kind of won the territorial play tonight.”
Paul Stastny scored his first goal for the Canes in the opening frame for an early 1-0 lead.
“That was probably one of our best games of the year, if not the best,” Skjei said. “Forechecking, not giving them much, then taking the game to them and playing below the goal line. It was textbook how we wanted to play.”
Ilya Sorokin made 26 saves in the Islanders loss.
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