Hurricanes rely on poise, experience in Game 5 victory

WASHINGTON -- The game is tied, it's tight, getting late into the third period, overtime looming, and the Washington Capitals, in their home building and with the crowd revved up, are desperately pushing to keep their season alive.

Some other opponents might have been uncomfortable in that situation in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Second Round at Capital One Arena on Thursday.

The Carolina Hurricanes were steady, flexible but unbreakable, which is exactly what 84 games across seven straight years in the Stanley Cup Playoffs buys you. It's moments like the third period Thursday when confidence in your game and belief in how you play it matter most.

"We've been playing like that for a long time," Carolina captain Jordan Staal said. "We've been in playoffs in those kinds of games for quite some time and the guys trust our game. I think that's the biggest thing. When you start wavering off what we want to do it starts getting squirrelly and things start not looking great. But when you believe in what you're going to do that it's going to work out, I think it just becomes more calm and more consistent that eventually if we continue what we're doing we're going to win the game. And it looks like it did tonight."

Andrei Svechnikov scored at 18:01. Seth Jarvis added an empty-net goal at 19:33. Frederik Andersen stopped all 10 shots he faced in the third, the most work he had in a single period in the entire five-game series. The Hurricanes won 3-1. They're going to the Eastern Conference Final for the second time in three seasons and the third time in seven under coach Rod Brind'Amour.

"Stuck with it," defenseman Sean Walker said. "It might not have been our prettiest game, but everyone just played the way we had to to get a win."

The Hurricanes rarely have to do more than that. Their enough is good enough when it looks like it has looked through 10 games across two rounds in the playoffs.

They pressure all over the ice as a five-man unit, their opponents’ time and space fleeting, if they ever had it to begin with.

"We're a lot of just on top of guys," Staal said. "We just kind of give them the least amount of room and make them turn the puck over so we have the puck, and then when we have the puck we try to move it as quick as we can into their end and grind them out."

They get sticks in lanes, knocking down pucks, with nobody better at it than defenseman Jaccob Slavin, so much so that Capitals coach Spencer Carbery questioned why he isn't in the running for the Norris Trophy as the League's best defenseman every single season.

"They are just relentless with their pressure, and their ability to break plays up with their sticks, there's no team in the League like it," Carbery said.

They don't give up many shots on goal. The Capitals had 19 on Thursday and 96 in five games, an average of 19.2.

In fact, Svechnikov's goal might not happen without Walker getting his stick on Alex Ovechkin's shot from above the right face-off circle 14 seconds earlier, stopping it from being a shot on goal. If he doesn't, that's a clean look in space for the greatest goal-scorer in NHL history.

Walker got the puck back, started the rush and set up Svechnikov with a give-and-go.

"Obviously, you shouldn't give a guy like that that much time and space to begin with, so obviously a little breakdown but really happy I got my stick on it," Walker said of his block on Ovechkin's shot. "Actually, it was broke after that play, so I'm really happy it didn't break when I was making the pass back to 'Svech.' All in all, a good shift, for sure."

Good shift after good shift after good shift. That's the Hurricanes when they're on their game.

The Capitals played arguably their most complete game of the series Thursday, maybe other than Game 2, their lone win. The third period was perhaps their best period of the series, and it did not matter.

"They don't get rattled," Carbery said. "The game stays tight and could go either way, but you can just tell the experience and the calmness of their group through various points in that series."

And now the Hurricanes are moving on feeling even better about themselves than they did before Game 5.

They have 15 players who have scored in these playoffs, led by Svechnikov with eight goals. Staal became the latest to join, scoring 9:38 into the first period to give the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead.

Andersen is both healthy and playing at his best. His left-pad save on Pierre-Luc Dubois 53 seconds into the third period is exactly the kind of save Carolina needs from time to time. The Hurricanes’ defensive breakdowns are rare, but they happen, and one did in that moment.

They are a team on top of its game, playing exactly how it wants to be playing at the most important time.

The Florida Panthers or Toronto Maple Leafs will be next. To the Hurricanes, it's irrelevant.

"We don't care who we're going to play," Walker said. "We're going to end up just doing our systems, our game plan going forward and make them play our game."