Recap: Canes Top Blue Jackets for First Win of Season

COLUMBUS - The Carolina Hurricanes earned their first win of the 2018-19 regular season, defeating the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-1.
Curtis McElhinney made 31 saves in his first start with the Hurricanes, while Sebastian Aho (1g, 1a) and Micheal Ferland (1g, 1a) each recorded two points.
Here are five takeaways from tonight's game.

One
The Canes' second game of the season was a night of firsts, headlined by Rod Brind'Amour's first victory as a head coach in the NHL. He earned it, and there are certainly many more to come.
As the final horn sounded, McElhinney scooped up the game puck to give to the Canes' bench boss, then awarded to him in the locker room by Jordan Staal..

"I just stood back there and yelled," Brind'Amour joked. "He was making all the saves."
Two
Despite peppering Thomas Greiss with 46 shots on Opening Night, it took the Hurricanes until the waning minutes of regulation to find the back of the net.
Tonight, it didn't even take 120 seconds. Andrei Svechnikov forced a turnover at his own blue line, kickstarting a rush up the ice. Jordan Martinook joined as the high middle man in the 3-on-2 rush, took a pass from Svechnikov and buried his snap wrister for his first goal as a Hurricane.

"He works so, so hard every shift," Aho said of Martinook. "It was a nice pass by Svech. That was a big goal for us."
"It's always nice to get ahead and get the crowd out of it a little bit, though they did it for us with the lights, so that was perfect," Brind'Amour said, referencing the extended delay at the start of the game due to a section of game lights losing power. "Especially when we struggled to score last night, to get one early calmed the guys down."
With the primary assist on the goal, Svechnikov recorded the first of what's sure to be many with the Hurricanes. At 18 years and 193 days, Svechnikov is the third youngest player in franchise history to notch his first NHL point.
"I'm proud of the kid in general. He's a great kid. He wants to learn, and he's got a lot to learn. He's going to be a great player in this league," Brind'Amour said. "You have to remember how young he is. That's something I have to keep reminding myself that he's just a kid. He's out there in the NHL, and he doesn't look out of place."
Three
It was fortuitous timing for the Hurricanes that when Scott Darling suffered an unfortunate lower-body injury in the team's final preseason game, McElhinney hit the waiver wire the very next day. The Canes snagged him to add a veteran presence to their goaltending duo and provide a stopgap while Darling heals.
Playing a back-to-back to open the season (and another game on Sunday evening), the Canes turned to McElhinney against his former team, with which he appeared in 85 games from 2013-17.
"I've got a lot of former teams, unfortunately, now. It feels great. I think I played them three or four times when I was in Toronto and didn't get a single win against them," McElhinney said. "Just trying to make a good first impression for everybody, and it was nice that it was against a former team."
In a whirlwind, emotional week for McElhinney getting back on the ice to simply play hockey is the one constant.
"That's the one familiarity with it when there's a lot of transition like this: You step on the ice, and everything seems to be normal, which is nice," he said. "Everybody has been great so far, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this season."

The 35-year-old netminder was sharp and in control in his first start in a Hurricanes uniform. When the Canes got sloppy and loose in their own zone, McElhinney was there to bail out his team.
"He was huge for us tonight," Aho said. "He made a couple key saves."
In the first period, at the tail end of a dominant shift for Columbus, a shot careened off the end boards onto the stick of Cam Atkinson, parked along the far side of the net. McElhinney outstretched his right pad to deny Atkinson's stuff attempt and preserve the 1-1 score. In the second period, among a flurry of many other fine stops, McElhinney snared a shot from a wide-open Nick Foligno in the slot.

"It was great that we were able to get him and he contributes like that," Brind'Amour said.
"I'm always grateful for an opportunity to play at any time in this league," McElhinney said. "For Carolina to give me that right now, it feels tremendous."
Four
Sebastian Aho came into tonight's game with 53 career NHL goals scored - and none of them in October. In Aho's rookie season, it was game No. 14 in which he scored his first goal. Last year, it was game No. 16.
No need to wait until November this year; Aho tallied his first goal in the fifth period of this young season, which gave the Hurricanes a 2-1 advantage in the second period.

After the game, a relieved Aho laughed about finally scoring in October.
"It was good to get this win," he downplayed it.
Five
Aho's linemate Micheal Ferland also chipped in a two-point performance, scoring his first goal and tallying his first point with his new team.
His goal was the insurance marker for the Canes in the third period. After killing a roughing minor levied against Aho, the Canes turned the puck back the other way. Aho fought off a couple of defenders to hit Ferland in stride with a gorgeous pass. Ferland wasted no time, booming a one-timer to the back of the net.

A night of firsts, indeed, capped off by the Canes' first win of the season.
"It was a tough loss last night. We probably deserved better, I think," Brind'Amour said. "We expressed with the group that, if we keep that mindset of how we want to approach the game, we'll be all right."
Up Next
The Hurricanes host another Metropolitan Division opponent, the New York Rangers, on Sunday evening at 5 p.m.
"I can't say enough of the guys," Brind'Amour said. "They're working hard."