The Carolina Hurricanes opened the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a win last night, defeating the Nashville Predators 5-2 in Game One of their first round series.
Brock McGinn returned to the lineup after missing quite a bit of time at the end of the season with an upper-body injury, while Jaccob Slavin, who was questionable to play, was also in the lineup. Alex Nedeljkovic got the start for the Hurricanes.
The game opened with a fairly even first period which saw the teams trade goals. In the second period, however, the Hurricanes started to take over and were controlling most of the play. Carolina was sustaining pressure in Nashville’s end while the Predators were only getting most of their chances off the rush. Despite this, Jordan Staal was the only person able to beat Juuse Saros in the period, then the Predators tied the game on a lucky shot from Erik Haula.
The third period was where the Hurricanes really started to dominate though. Carolina had control for nearly the entire period and it seemed like the majority of the period was spent in Nashville’s end. All forwards were forechecking hard and pressing the Predators’ defenders to create turnovers. Nino Niederreiter broke the tie off a great play by Martin Necas, before Jordan Staal scored his second goal of the game for the Hurricanes. Nashville did get some chances late in the period but Andrei Svechnikov added an empty net goal to secure the win.
Overall, it was a very good team effort by the Hurricanes. They really didn’t allow the Predators to sustain much pressure in their end at any point in the game and outplayed Nashville by quite a margin in the back half of the game, outshooting the Predators 25-14 in the last two periods.
In addition to the relentless forechecking, the commitment to defense from the whole forward group was excellent as well. When the Predators did manage to get chances, the majority of them weren’t of an overly high quality.
The crowd was awesome as well and it was great to see such a lively atmosphere for the playoffs. It was a big win for the Hurricanes and a great way to start the postseason.
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Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • 
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