In Brooklyn, Curtis McElhinney made 17 saves for the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday afternoon.
McElhinney entered the game early in the middle frame after Petr Mrazek left the match with an injury; the backup goalie had not played a game in 22 days and looked sharp and benefited from a series clangs off the iron as the Canes defeated the New York Islanders, 2-1, in Game 2.
“[McElhinney]’s been great all year, so there was no, ‘Oh no, we have to put that guy in,'” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “It was more, this is how this night is going, we’re dropping like flies and now our goalie goes down. I certainly loved the fact that [McElhinney] was there ready to rock and roll.”
Mrazek had nine saves through the sixth minute of the second period.
The only blemish on the 10 shots he faced was an early power play marker to Mathew Barzal in the first period at 13:17.
The puck went into the net off a deflected pass attempt by Barzal; Jaccob Slavin inadvertently made contact with the puck.
“We have a lot of belief within these walls; we all know the guy next to you is going to give it his all and continue to battle,” Slavin said. “It’s what we’ve been all year, a hard-working team. Hopefully we can keep doing that.”
The isles were snake-bit by the iron and waved off goals, two goals were negated by review.
“We didn’t get any of those [bounces] today,” Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock said. “We had some pretty good chances to score and is was just millimeters away. But there’s a lot of hockey left here. It’s just important that we prepare ourselves for Game 3.”
The Canes broke through early in the third when Warren Foegele struck with just 17 seconds gone in the final frame; that goal was followed at 1:05 by a strike from Nino Niederreiter for the 2-1 lead.
“I’m not really surprised by our play because we’ve been playing playoff hockey the entire second half of the season,” Foegele said. “This is a real resilient group and we keep getting injuries each game, but someone else is stepping up, whether that’s blocking shots or contributing in some way. I’m really proud of the group.”
McElhinney did the rest.
“We had to stick to the game plan, get pucks to the net and traffic in front of their goalie and that’s exactly what we did,” Niederreiter said.
[WATCH: All Hurricanes vs. Islanders highlights | Complete series coverage]
Robin Lehner made 16 saves in a series so far that is reminiscent of his time with the Buffalo Sabres.
“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Josh Bailey said. “It could be 2-0 us, but it’s 0-2. We can’t get down. We still feel good about our group and have confidence that we can turn this around.”
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