New York — Trailing by a goal with 20 minutes to go and their season on the line, the Carolina Hurricanes weren’t discouraged. They knew they could turn the game around.
Jordan Staal and Evgeny Kuznetsov scored 3:06 apart early in the third period, and the Hurricanes got four goals in the period for a 4-1 win over the New York Rangers in Game 5 of the second-round playoff series on Monday night, staving off elimination for the second straight game.
“There was no panic, we understood what the situation was,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amoiur said. “It wasn’t like we were dead. … You were one shot away, and that’s the way they approached it.”
Jordan Martinook and Martin Necas also scored in the Hurricanes’ big third period, and Frederik Andersen – starting for the fourth time in five games in this series and ninth time in 10 games in the postseason – had 20 saves.
“No one was definitely hanging any heads,” Staal said, “We knew we had to have our best period, and we did. We’re going to have another huge challenge going back home in a couple of days. … We’re fighting for our lives and the boys showed up and it showed.”
Jacob Trouba scored a short-handed goal and Igor Shesterkin stopped 24 shots for New York, which has lost two straight after taking a 3-0 series lead.
“One game at a time,” Rangers forward Chris Kreider said. “If you had told me it would be 3-2 against the second-best team in the league with an opportunity to close it out, that’s a pretty good spot to be in. We’ll just go down there and play better, be more detailed. Find a way to win.”
New York coach Peter Laviolette was also displeased with the result.
“Got some time here before the next game, but clearly we got do a lot of things better,” he said. “There were a lot of issues tonight. We’ll go back and look at it and we’ll try to correct those issues.”
Game 6 is Thursday night in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Hurricanes won despite going 0 for 3 on the power play to fall to 1 for 20 in this series while giving up a short-handed goal for the second time.
“We’re fighting for our lives every game,” Martinook said. “We gave ourselves a chance to play another game and hopefully give ourselves a chance to come back here (for a deciding Game 7).”
Stars 5, Avalanche 1
Denver — Wyatt Johnston scored twice on the eve of his 21st birthday as the Dallas Stars pushed Colorado to the brink of elimination Monday night with a 5-1 win in Game 4 that came hours…
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