Hurricanes tie franchise home win record, eliminate Rangers from playoffs

RALEIGH, N.C. — Success, in Carolina Hurricanes parlance, is often defined as “2006.” That season — the end of which resulted in the Canes’ lone Stanley Cup championship — has been the measure by which all subsequent seasons have been judged.

There were, after another run in 2009, the “dark times,” also known as “BB” — Before Rod Brind’Amour — when the Hurricanes didn’t so much as sniff the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs for nearly a decade. During that stretch, there were not many happenings to elicit excitement, let alone comparisons to 2006.

But we are now in Year 7 of the Era of Rod. Last week when the Hurricanes clinched a 2025 playoff spot, Brind’Amour became the sixth coach in NHL history to lead a team to the playoffs in each of his first seven seasons behind the bench. He is the only active head coach to have accomplished that feat.

Saturday, the Canes also accomplished something the team hadn’t done since … 2006.

With a 7-3 win over the New York Rangers at Lenovo Center, the Hurricanes matched that 2006 team’s home win total with a franchise record-tying 31st. Carolina can set a new record for home wins Sunday in its regular-season home finale against Toronto.

Seth Jarvis had a goal and two assists and Jordan Staal and Jackson Blake had a goal and an assist each. Seven different players scored and Pyotr Kochetkov, who’d been in a funk between the pipes of late, made 29 saves to preserve the victory.

But, does the obvious comparison to 2006 — and a gaudy home record — matter?

Playing at home certainly does; the players themselves suggest it. In every postgame broadcast encounter, to a person, the Canes’ skaters are effusive in their praise of Lenovo Center’s atmosphere. To a person, players acquired midseason or in the offseason tell anyone who asks that Lenovo Center is a bear of an arena in which to play as an opposing skater.

More importantly at this time of year, the Hurricanes’ playoff history suggests it does.

In each of the past six years under Brind’Amour, the Hurricanes have won at least one playoff round — a streak that is tied for the best in NHL history to begin a coaching career — but have done so on the strength of a great run at home.

In the past four seasons, since the 2020 COVID bubble, the Hurricanes are 19-9 in playoff games at Lenovo Center. In those 18 games, Carolina has allowed 58 goals, an average of 2.07 per game.

Conversely, in games played on the road during that same stretch, the Canes are 7-16, allowing 3.57 goals per game. The 2022 playoffs showed the greatest disparity, with the Canes winning seven games on the road, while losing all six at home. (Problem was, though they lost just one home game that playoff season, it was a Game 7 heartbreaker to the Rangers to end the second round.)

So while this weekend’s games and the Hurricanes’ potential win total fairly elicit comparisons to the hallowed 2005-06 season, perhaps the more important milestone this season occurred three days earlier when, by rallying to force overtime against Washington, the Canes secured home ice advantage in the first round against New Jersey.

See you next year, New York

That the Canes’ team-record-tying win came against the Rangers was serendipitous. In addition to the Rangers being a frequent divisional and playoff opponent — the team to eliminate Carolina in that one single home loss in 2022, and the team to again eliminate the Canes last season — the Hurricanes’ win Saturday ensured New York can’t do it again this year.

Carolina spent Saturday’s matinee playing like a team desperate to snap out of an 0-3-1 funk, during which the Hurricanes had allowed 18 goals and scored just eight. The Rangers, meanwhile, played nothing like a team desperately needing to win out to have a chance at sneaking into the final Eastern Conference wild-card position.

Igor Shesterkin, normally sure-handed — and sure of himself — between the pipes for New York, was leaky Saturday, particularly in the second period, as the Canes built a 4-0 lead.

After a Sebastian Aho zone entry during which Canes fans were clamoring for a hook or a hold against the Rangers after the Canes’ forward was felled to his knees, the puck found its way to Dmitry Orlov at the left point via Jarvis. Orlov faked a wrister and slid the puck across to Chatfield, who turned and fired through traffic, beating Shesterkin high blocker to put the home team on top, 1-0.

Jarvis finished his own chance at 17:46 of the first period to put Carolina in front by two, converting a wrister on a feed from behind the net by Aho to make it 2-0.

Blake added his 17th of the season early in the second after Shesterkin bobbled the puck at the top of the crease for a 3-0 Hurricanes advantage, and Mark Jankowski made it 4-0 later in the second through Shesterkin from in tight.

The Rangers got one back in the final minute of the second when Will Cuylle slipped one past Kochetkov from the left side on the bump-up shift following an ineffective Canes power play.

Fittingly, Canes captain Jordan Staal delivered the third-period dagger, a top-shelf wrister to finish a steal-and-rush up the left side with 16:15 to play.

When is Alexander Nikishin coming to Carolina?

With the announced signing this week of highly touted defenseman Alexander Nikishin, the next questions are: When will the young Russian defender get to Raleigh? And, when will he play?

“Soon” answers both questions about as ambiguously — and accurately — as possible.

“We need to get a U.S. visa so he can come over,” Carolina GM Eric Tulsky told in-house reporter Walt Ruff on Friday. “That is in process and should be done very soon. We hope to have good news today, so we could complete the process on Monday or Tuesday and bring him to the U.S.

Tulsky continued: “We are also trying to get him a Canadian visa, so that he would be eligible to play in our road games at the end of our season. We want to make sure he gets into at least one game in North America before we get to the playoffs, so he has a chance to play in our system.”

Tulsky also said that if the team can’t get Nikishin a visa to skate in Canada, he’ll likely get a couple of games in with the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Chicago, which runs the same on-ice system as the Hurricanes.

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