Wild-card team Carolina up 3-0
Ex-King Justin Williams breaks a tie in the third and the Hurricanes can finish the sweep Friday.
The Carolina Hurricanes put an old goalie in net and welcomed back their teenage draft pick. With the score tied, another young star set up their graying captain’s go-ahead goal.
That blend of young and old has the surging Hurricanes on the verge of a sweep.
Sebastian Aho assisted on Justin Williams’ key goal with 9:45 remaining, and Carolina beat the New York Islanders 5-2 on Wednesday night to take a 3-0 lead in their second-round series.
Teuvo Teravainen had two goals, including an empty-netter with 57.1 seconds remaining, Justin Faulk also scored and Aho added another empty-net goal with 4.8 seconds to play.
The wild-card Hurricanes are getting healthier too. Rookie winger Andrei Svechnikov, a 19-year-old who had been in concussion protocol, returned to the lineup. And forward Jordan Martinook, who missed the first two games of this series and suffered a lower body injury in Game 4 against the Capitals, also was back.
After losing the first two games of its first-round series with Washington, Carolina has won seven of eight and will try for the sweep Friday night.
“The next game’s always the toughest,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “They’re not going to go away. We know that. These games have all been tight — onegoal games, essentially, and it’s going to be like that on Friday.”
Curtis McElhinney — who at 35 years and 343 days old became the oldest goalie in NHL history to make his first playoff start — stopped 28 shots in place of Petr Mrazek, who is day-to-day with a lower body injury. After McElhinney made two bang-bang saves in the second period while doing a split, the crowd chanted his first name.
“It’s one of those timely saves that you need to come up with at certain points of the game,” McElhinney said, “and tonight, it was there for me.”
at Dallas 4, St. Louis 2: Rookie Roope Hintz scored his fifth goal of the playoffs, Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov each had two assists and Dallas evened the second-round series at two games each.
Rookie coach Jim Montgomery made a significant change by switching up his top two lines, and the move paid off for Dallas.
Seguin skated on a line with Jason Dickinson and Mats Zuccarello. That put Hintz, instead of Seguin, with Radulov and Jaime Benn.
Dickinson, Jason Spezza and John Klingberg also scored for the Stars.