The Carolina Hurricanes are one step nearer to creating their first return to the Stanley Cup Last for the reason that 2005-06 season. Because of their 4-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday evening, they now have a 3-1 collection lead and have an opportunity to shut out the collection again house on Friday evening.
The Hurricanes at the moment are 11-1 this postseason.
Listed here are a few of the greatest winners and losers from Wednesday’s recreation.
Wednesday’s winners
Hurricanes: Highway warriors. With Wednesday’s win, Carolina has now gained its first six street video games of the playoffs, making them simply the seventh workforce in NHL historical past to ever accomplish that.
Granted, they’re additionally 5-1 at house, which can be spectacular, however an ideal 6-0 run on the street to open the playoffs is a large feat.
Ok’Andre Miller, Carolina Hurricanes. Suppose the New York Rangers have some regrets about buying and selling away Miller to a divisional rival earlier than the beginning of the 2025-26 season?
If they didn’t already, they need to now.
After a robust common season that was arguably his finest within the NHL, Miller has elevated his recreation to a completely new degree within the playoffs and is likely to be one in every of Carolina’s finest total gamers proper now.
He’s dictating the tempo of video games when he’s on the ice, contributing in all three zones and enjoying like a professional top-pairing defender.
The Taylor Corridor-Logan Stankoven-Jackson Blake line. This trio performed 9:34 of 5-on-5 ice time for the Hurricanes on Wednesday. In these 9 minutes, they outscored Montreal 1-0, had a 28-4 shot try share, a 14-0 photographs on aim benefit and 98.3% anticipated aim share.
Really dominant displaying. Recreation-changing displaying.
(Numbers Via Natural Stat Trick)
Jakub Dobes, Montreal Canadiens. His workforce misplaced. However he’s the one man that you would be able to not level the finger at. He has been the very best goalie within the Stanley Cup Playoffs up to now and deserved a greater end result on Wednesday. Yeah, he allowed three targets. However Carolina in all probability ought to have scored six or seven targets, given the way in which the sport was performed.
He performed in addition to a goalie can play, given the circumstances.
If Montreal finds a manner again into this collection, he could be on the prime of the Conny Smythe checklist.
He’s going to wish his teammates to step up for that to occur.
Wednesday’s losers
Montreal’s (lack of) offense. With solely 18 photographs on aim on Wednesday, which means Montreal has recorded simply 43 photographs on aim over the previous three video games.
Mixed. Only for comparability’s sake, Carolina had 43 photographs on aim in Recreation 4 on Wednesday evening alone.
That’s the worst three-game stretch in playoff historical past since photographs on aim turned an formally tracked stat.
The earlier worst mark was 45 photographs by the 1994-95 San Jose Sharks over a three-game stretch.
At one level within the third interval on Wednesday, Canadiens followers started chanting “shoot the puck” at their workforce.
The message didn’t get by as Montreal was outshot 14-3 within the third interval alone.
Montreal’s self-discipline. There have been lots of issues for the Canadiens on Wednesday, and there have been lots of issues on this collection. Self-discipline on Wednesday was one in every of them. They gave Carolina six energy play alternatives, together with an prolonged 5-on-3 benefit mid-way by the second interval.
Montreal had simply two energy performs.
That isn’t precisely a profitable system when you’re already struggling to generate offense.
Martin St. Louis timeout utilization. Within the grand scheme of issues, this was not an enormous deal, however St. Louis utilizing his solely timeout after Carolina’s first aim so he may get an prolonged take a look at the replay to see if it was offside for a possible problem was a reasonably important miss.
Not solely was the play onside, and not using a problem, however he actually may have used that timeout a couple of minutes later within the interval when Carolina scored two extra targets so as to add on to the lead.
He has pushed many of the proper buttons since taking up because the workforce’s head coach. That was not one in every of them.
