In the three-game sweep from Wednesday night, we start in Denver where Victor Rask scored 1L49 into overtime to give the visiting Carolina Hurricanes a 1-0 win over the Avalanche.
Rask’s goal came off a backhand after a nice pass from Ryan Murphy.
“Great opportunity real quick,” Rask said. “I think their guys were out there for a long time, so I had a good step on the guys that were out and just put it in the net. I was just trying to drag it all the way over to the other side, and just had open net and put it in.”
Semyon Varlamov had made 18 saves prior to Rask’s goal in the Avs net.
Cam Ward stopped 26 shots including a breakaway early in OT by Jarome Iginla.
“Those are the chances you’d love to have back and they come back right after that and score,” Iginla said. “But I thought even before that in the last 5 to 10 minutes we had a good push and some really good chances. Both goalies were outstanding tonight. We felt like we let [Varlamov] down. We couldn’t find him one goal. It’s tough when you get a breakaway in OT and you don’t get it.”
That chance came just 23 seconds into the extra session.
“Three-on-three obviously you have to be ready for the scoring chance because they’re going to be coming,” Ward said. “The way we’ve seen throughout the League, the goaltender has to make a big save and then hopefully you can turn it around and go back the other way. Fortunately, we were able to do that.”
In Edmonton, Connor McDavid picked up his fourth goal to help the Oilers defeat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1.
“Nail (Yakupov) made a great play on the wall, battling off a couple of guys, and chipped it down to [Benoit Pouliot] and, obviously [Pouliot] made a great pass,” McDavid said. “It’s a credit to those guys. I think the goalie may have expected me to go backhand, because that’s where your momentum is taking you. But whenever you can throw something a little different at them that’s going to turn the odds in your favor.”
Mark Letestu and Teddy Purcell added markers for the Oilers.
“It was a win against a very good opponent,” Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. “We had some success on the road and wanted to see how we would respond coming back home. The game had a little bit of everything. Special teams played a big role in it, especially on the penalty kill. It was a good win. It is one that we will bank and be proud of, but there are still areas of our game where we have to get better.”
Cam Talbot turned aside 28 shots for the win.
“I think they have always been skilled and they’ve always been fast, but now they believe in the system and they’re doing more things right,” Red Wings center Henrik Zetterberg said. “[McDavid] is fast, he’s a great player, he’s going to be good in this league for many years.”
Tomas Tatar picked up the lone goal for the Wings.
“I thought we did a lot of really good stuff in the second and we had two huge [mistakes] and you can’t win with big blowups,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “I thought they weren’t necessarily systematic errors, they were just a couple of errors on our end individually. But you can’t give up breakaways, you can’t give up 2-on-1s, you can’t give up 3-on-2s like that.”
In Buffalo, goalie Chad Johnson came up big in the skills competition for the Sabres, stopping four of five attempts by the Toronto Maple Leafs, in leading the Sabres to a 2-1 SO win.
“We definitely deserved to win that one,” Sabres forward Evander Kane said. “We worked hard for it from the start, got down early but kept battling and were able to get the victory.”
The Sabres hustled all game and the shot attempt total for the game was 61-49 in the Sabres’ favor.
“We wanted to come out and get a lot of shots on goal,” Sabres forward Jack Eichel said. “It took us to almost shot 35 to break them, and we needed that. We’re having trouble scoring goals right now. Maybe now we’ll get on a roll, and I think this is a team that can do that.”
Johnson had 23 saves on the night including a number of stellar efforts.
“I thought he really settled in and the second and third,” Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said. “I don’t know how many quality scoring chances he had, but he had a few of them he was really strong on, particularly in overtime. The stop against Kadri was excellent. He gave us a chance to win tonight.”
The extra session was the first for the Sabres this season.
“It’s definitely a different situation,” Johnson said. “As much as there are chances, it’s definitely slower; at a slower pace you can see that. It may be exciting in the aspect that there’s a rush that comes the other way, but for me it’s just sort of playing it like a summer hockey game. There are turnovers here and there and a lot of chances. I guess those 3-on-3 situations we have practiced have helped.”
PA Parenteau scored for the Leafs in regulation and Kane scored for the Sabres.
“I thought we did lots of good things,” Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “We obviously took too many penalties. I don’t quite understand, we should have been on the power play four minutes in the third and we weren’t at all, so that’s disappointing but it’s also part of life. I thought our goaltender was really strong, which is real important for us. It gives us a chance moving ahead.”
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