Smith helps Hurricanes take 2-0 series lead
Brendan Smith scored a shorthanded goal late in the second period while Antti Raanta finished with 21 saves to help the Carolina Hurricanes beat the New York Rangers 2-0 on Friday night, taking a 2-0 lead in their second-round playoff series.
Smith’s goal off a feed from Sebastian Aho marked his first postseason goal in nine years, and it was the difference in a tightly defended game by both teams with little space to operate and even fewer traffic-free looks at the net.
Aho added a clinching empty-net score to finish this off with 1.8 seconds left as Raanta held up.
The Hurricanes had flirted with tallying a shorthanded goal earlier in the game multiple times, including once when Teuvo Teravainen pinged the right post in the first period from the slot off a feed from Aho. It ended up foreshadowing the Hurricanes’ breakthrough score, with Aho skating in on the right side to set up Smith for a one-timer from the left that cleanly zipped past Igor Shesterkin for the putaway with 4:06 left in the second.
Carolina improved to 6-0 at home in the playoffs and has a 2-0 lead for the second straight round. Now they face the challenge of winning on the road for the first time in the postseason after claiming a seven-game first-round series against Boston in which no team managed a road win.
They’ll get their first chance to win at Madison Square Garden in Game 3 on Sunday. And the Rangers will try to mount another series comeback after rallying from a 3-1 deficit to beat Pittsburgh in a seven-game first-round series.Shesterkin finished with 20 saves to lead the Rangers on a night with few offensive highlights.
The teams combined for 43 shots and had big penalty kills as well, with New York killing off more than a minute of 5-on-3 time while the Hurricanes scored their short-handed goal on a 4-minute kill for a doubleminor high-sticking penalty on Brady Skjei.
AS STARS COACH >> Rick Bowness will not return as head coach of the Dallas Stars after nearly three seasons in which he led them to the Stanley Cup Final and the playoffs again this season.
While Bowness was not under contract past this season, the 67-year-old coach said in a statement released by the team Friday that he was stepping away to “allow the organization the opportunity to pursue a different direction at the head coaching position.”
General manager Jim Nill said assistant coaches John Stevens, Derek Laxdal and Todd Nelson also would not return.
Bowness has been on an NHL bench for a record 2,562 regular-season games as a head coach or an assistant over nearly four decades. He said after the season ended with an overtime loss in Game 7 at Calgary that he still had the passion to keep coaching. He said he would have opportunities to coach if he wanted them.
Bowness got a two-year contract from the Stars after that 2020 final as their interim head coach, a stint that included the 4 ½-month pause in the season because of the pandemic and two months in a postseason bubble in Canada.