Hurricanes eliminate Capitals from NHL playoffs with late goal in Game 5: Takeaways

By / / Sports / 3 minutes of reading


WASHINGTON — The Carolina Hurricanes, behind another strong game from goalie Frederik Andersen and goals from Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov, beat the Washington Capitals 3-1 in Game 5 of their Stanley Cup playoff series.

With the loss, the Capitals are eliminated from the postseason. Carolina, meanwhile, awaits the winner of the other Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers — though we’ve all got a hunch how that one will turn out, don’t we?

Here’s what I saw from Capital One Arena in Game 5.

Svechnikov stunner

Sometime in the second period, the game started to feel odd. We saw an overturned goal, a double-doink miss about two seconds before the second intermission from Seth Jarvis, near misses on both sides and a few different chaotic sequences that pushed Andersen into the net.

Nothing was stranger, though, than the shot that put Carolina through to the Eastern Conference final. With 1:59 remaining, Svechnikov whipped a shot along the goal line past Logan Thompson. Thompson had been outstanding until that point, the Capitals’ best player — but it didn’t matter. Svechnikov stunned the crowd, and that was that.

Nikishin’s highly anticipated debut

Alexander Nikishin’s first NHL period was nothing to write home about; it doesn’t get much more uneventful than 4 minutes, 42 seconds of ice time featuring two total nondescript shot attempts. In the second period, though, things got real in a hurry for Carolina’s fascinating 24-year-old defenseman.

Nikishin, who’s been in North America for about a month after leaving the KHL, replaced the injured Jalen Chatfield in Carolina’s lineup. After a slow few shifts to start things out, he narrowly avoided disaster less than two minutes into the second period, making a terrible giveaway in Carolina’s end that led to an apparent goal by Matt Roy off a setup from Jakob Chychrun. Connor McMichael, though, was offside on the play, and the goal was overturned after the world’s quickest challenge. A few minutes later, Nikishin headed to the box for tripping Pierre-Luc Dubois.

By the end of the second, Nikishin had fully settled in, flashing the skillset — skating, size, fearlessness — that made Carolina’s front office so intent on getting him in the mix. On one shift, he shut down Alex Ovechkin and generated some shots for himself. “Since he was 12 years old, he had only one dream: to play with or against Alex Ovechkin,” Hurricanes scout Oleg Smirnov told The Athletic’s Peter Baugh earlier this month. Done and done.

Thompson tough

Plenty of stuff was going to need to go the Capitals’ way if they wanted to extend the series, and it all started with Thompson, who’d been good overall in the postseason and remarkable at Capital One Arena (.954 save percentage and 10.6 goals saved above expectations coming into Thursday). If he wasn’t at his best, Washington wasn’t going to have a shot — and Thompson did his part, especially on a remarkable sequence in the final minute of the first period.

After a pad save on Taylor Hall carried him out of the crease and left the goal wide open for Logan Stankoven on the rebound attempt, Thompson gathered himself and lunged to his right, stoning Stankoven and keeping the score tied 1-1. The similarities between Thompson and Braden Holtby, the starter on the 2018 Stanley Cup champions, had already turned into a meme among Capitals fans, and Thompson’s stop added some grist to the mill. Holtby, of course, made a high-stakes paddle save of his own on Vegas Golden Knights winger Alex Tuch during Game 2 of the 2018 Final.

(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)





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