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The sprint for the finish line in the regular season started Thursday for the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Winter Olympics are over, the Canes had three players return from Italy with Olympic medals, and it was finally back to NHL business at the Lenovo Center.
“Getting back to game speed, that’s a little concern for me, no matter who you’re playing,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Thursday morning.
The Canes were playing the Tampa Bay Lightning and got back to game speed quickly, scoring three times in the first seven minutes of the first period. But it would be a fight to the finish between the two best teams in the Eastern Conference as the Canes finally emerged with a 5-4 victory.
The Lightning (38-15-4), playing a second game without head coach Jon Cooper, clawed back from an early 3-0 deficit and had the score tied 4-4 going into the third period.
Sebastian Aho’s power-play goal at 7:17 of the third would stand up as the winner, although the final three minutes had the Lightning pulling goalie Jonas Johansson for a sixth attacker and the Canes somehow missing the empty net four or five times.
Aho said he felt “pretty gassed” after the Olympics — the center did not skate Thursday morning — but got his power-play shot from the right side through traffic with Jordan Staal in front of the net.
“Good win. Obviously, we wanted to start the right way, and we were able to win against a good hockey team,” Aho said. “We wanted the two points, and we got it.”
Before the game, the Olympians were recognized, including Jake Guentzel (Team USA) and Brandon Hagel (Canada) of the Lightning.
Nikolaj Ehlers and goalie Frederik Andersen, who played for Team Denmark in Milan, received nice ovations. Aho, who helped Finland to a bronze medal, got a big hand. It was a bit louder for the Canes’ Seth Jarvis, who was named to Team Canada when the Lightning’s Brayden Point was injured and unable to make the trip.
But the loudest reception, as expected, was for Canes defenseman Jaccob Slavin, who brought back a gold medal after the United States’ thrilling 2-1 overtime win over Canada on Sunday.
That brought about loud “USA! USA!” chants. Soon, the puck dropped for the Canes’ first game since Feb. 5, when Carolina took a 2-0 road win over the New York Rangers before the pause for the Olympics.
Among the Olympians, Aho, Ehlers and Jarvis would score for the Canes (37-15-6), and Hagel for the Lightning. Slavin did his part as well in the defensive zone and slammed Nikita Kucherov into the boards with a thunderous hit with about a minute to play in regulation.
The Canes’ first three goals came in rapid succession. Ehlers ripped a shot from the left wing 1:43 into the game and Logan Stankoven, on his 23rd birthday, scored off the rush 73 seconds later for his first goal in 13 games.
Taylor Hall, whose give-and-go pass led to Stankoven’s score, then converted a nifty Jackson Blake pass for a tap-in goal. That made it 3-0 Canes just 6:41 into the opening period – the fastest Carolina had scored three goals to start a game in more than eight years.
But the Lightning, 20-1-1 in their last 22 games before Thursday, can also score quickly, and did. Before the first period ended, Hagel and Kucherov scored 35 seconds apart — Hagel on a shot from the left circle and Kucherov from the right — as the Canes lost coverage in their zone.
The Lightning were in the second game of a back-to-back, having beaten Toronto 4-2 on Wednesday in their first game after the Olympic break. In that game, Point had two goals and assists; Kucherov had a goal and two assists.
Tampa’s Cooper missed a second game after the death of his father, Robert. Cooper, who coached Team Canada in Milan, was replaced by assistant coach Rob Zettler and should return for the next game.
Canes goalie Brandon Bussi won an eighth straight game but had an adventurous night in net. He left the net and badly mishandled a puck in the first period. He came out of the net again in the second period, only to have the puck take a wicked carom off the boards and come inches from crossing the goal line.
But Bussi also had some quality stops, denying a Kucherov one-timer in the first and then stoning Yanni Gourde on a breakaway in the second. The Canes helped him out by allowing just six shots in the third as Bussi improved his record to 24-3-1.
“I liked our game in the third, not giving up much,” Brind’Amour said. “That was the key. We were giving up too many good looks for them, but in the third I thought we settled down a little bit and got to our game.”
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Chip Alexander
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