Five factors that will determine Rangers-Hurricanes series
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
The New York Rangers had the NHL’s best regular-season record. The Carolina Hurricanes finished directly in their rearview mirror, three points back — and objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
“The Rangers were the best team, and we were on their heels all year,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “You gotta get through the best at some point, so might as well have at it now.”
They meet in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, after the Rangers swept the Washington Capitals and the Hurricanes eliminated the New York Islanders in five games. Game 1 of their series is Sunday (4 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN+).
The last time these teams collided was in the second round of the 2022 playoffs, a series the Rangers won in seven games. Center Vincent Trocheck was on that Hurricanes team, scoring three goals in the series. He’s now a key forward on the Rangers.
“It was a battle. But it’s two completely different teams now. A lot of new guys since I’ve been there,” he said. “But still the same style of hockey [in Carolina].”
One constant is Brind’Amour behind the Hurricanes bench. He and Rangers coach Peter Laviolette have a unique history: In 2006, Laviolette coached the Hurricanes to the Stanley Cup … and Brind’Amour was his captain.
The similarities between these titans of the East don’t end there. Here are five things that could swing this incredibly tight series in either direction.
Can the Rangers thrive at 5-on-5?
By now, the Rangers’ vulnerabilities at 5-on-5 play are canon. We wrote about them in December. We wrote about them again in April.
They did little to dispel those concerns against the Capitals, with a 38.8% expected goals percentage at 5-on-5 in their sweep. But score effects were a big part of that disparity, especially on offense: The Rangers were tied for just 13 minutes and 50 seconds in the series and trailed for just 17 seconds at 5-on-5.
New York is considered an underdog by many in this series, a notion that tracks to how middling it is when it is not on special teams, combined with how dominant the Hurricanes have been at 5-on-5. Carolina earned 59.5% of the shot attempts in the regular season, best in the league. They were second in expected goals percentage (56.9%), while the Rangers were 22nd overall (49%). That’s been a hallmark of Brind’Amour’s teams.
It should be noted that the Rangers have improved at 5-on-5 (51.8% expected goals percentage) since adding Jack Roslovic and Alex Wennberg to the lineup at the trade deadline.
Of course, the Hurricanes were still rolling at a 59.3% expected goals percentage after the deadline themselves.
“When it comes to how you run your offense, you have to look at how a team defends,” Laviolette said. “It does change a little bit for me based on what the D-zone coverage is doing.”
Under Laviolette, the Rangers have played a tough, simplified game that involves quick puck movement. That’s helped them find better results than last season, when they were overwhelmed by the speed of a team such as the New Jersey Devils, who eliminated them in the first round.
Carolina also moves the puck fast, but it moves its skates faster.
“It’s just fast hockey. They’ll swarm at times. They can get going, and you’ve just kind of got to keep your cool in your own zone and get the puck out and live to fight another day. They come in waves,” Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba said.
Brind’Amour felt that the 5-on-5 battle was going to be a tight one defensively. “They give you no room because they’re a good team,” he said.
One wild card for the Rangers: Center Filip Chytil, who’s been practicing with the team but hasn’t played since Nov. 2 due to a suspected concussion. He had four goals in seven games against Carolina in 2022, all of them at 5-on-5.
This series features two starting goaltenders who have hit their strides at the right time.
Even as the Rangers were stacking wins, Shesterkin was inconsistent earlier in the season, leading to backup Jonathan Quick getting 26 starts. But Shesterkin had a .918 save percentage and 5.9 goals saved above average in his 14 games since the NHL trade deadline.
Following a 4-1-0 start, doctors discovered a blood clotting issue affecting Andersen. He missed 49 games over a four-month span. Following his return to the lineup, Andersen posted a 9-1-0 record, 1.30 goals-against average, .951 save percentage and three shutouts. He led the NHL with 11.6 goals saved above average in that span, per Natural Stat Trick.
Andersen was named a finalist for the Masterton Trophy awarded “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.”
Shesterkin had better numbers in the first round with a .931 save percentage and a 1.75 goals-against average. Andersen had a .912 save percentage with a 2.25 GAA. Shesterkin faced more high-danger shot attempts per 60 minutes (7.47) than did Andersen (6.6), but both netminders saw their teams keep the heat off of them at even strength.
Andersen lost his only start against the Rangers this season, but stopped 24 of 26 shots. Shesterkin was 2-1 against the Hurricanes with a .915 save percentage and one shutout.
Of course, when discussing the Hurricanes, it’s never just one goalie in the conversation. Rookie Pyotr Kochetkov started 40 games for the Canes in the regular season, posting a .911 save percentage. He faced the Rangers twice in that 2022 series.
“There will be time when we’re going to rely on everyone on this team and he’s going to be a part of that,” Andersen said.
Will a revamped Carolina offense put it over?
Brind’Amour has coached the Hurricanes since the 2018-19 season. They’ve made the conference finals twice since then, including last season, when they were swept by the Florida Panthers in four straight one-goal games.
That encapsulated a frequent postseason issue for the Hurricanes: For all of their puck possession and shot attempts, they’ve often been unable to conjure up a goal at a critical time to swing a game or a series. It’s been one of the starker differences between the Rangers and the Hurricanes: Despite New York’s average play at 5-on-5, it finishes chances it creates more efficiently than Carolina.
The Hurricanes have traditionally not chased high-profile offensive rentals at the NHL trade deadline. That changed this season when they won the derby for Pittsburgh Penguins pending free agent winger Jake Guentzel. He’s an elite top-line talent who drives play and finishes chances. He’s also been one of the most effective playoff performers in the NHL over the past several seasons, with 62 points in 63 games, including four points in five games against the Islanders.
Carolina also added former Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov at the deadline. After registering seven points in 20 regular-season games, he had four points in five games in the first round.
Guentzel was plugged onto the Hurricanes’ top line with Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov.
Ask around the team and the fact that Svechnikov is in this series might be more important than any trade deadline pickup. He had five points in five games against the Islanders after missing the postseason in 2023 due to an ACL tear. He’s a difference-maker.
Can the Panarin line level up?
Artemi Panarin blamed himself for the Rangers’ first-round exit last season, tallying just two assists in seven games and skating to a minus-2 rating. He refocused in the offseason, symbolically shaving his head, and returned to have a career year: 120 points in 82 games, including 49 goals.
In his return to the playoffs, Panarin was solid: two goals and an assist in four games. The Rangers had such an advantage against the overmatched Capitals that they really didn’t need Panarin to carry them. That likely changes against the Hurricanes, given how tight this series will be played.
But that’s not just on Panarin. His line with Trocheck and Alexis Lafreniere had as many scoring chances at 5-on-5 as they surrendered in four games against the Capitals (20). They were slightly underwater in expected goals percentage (49%). The Rangers need this line to be better than one that trades chances with opponents.
The special teams stalemate?
The Rangers feed off their power play, which ranked third in the regular season (26.4%). They used it to close out three of their four victories against the Capitals, going 6-for-16 in the opening round. Not to be outdone was their penalty kill, which ranked No. 3 in the regular season (84.5%) and didn’t allow a Capitals power-play goal in three of the four games. In fact, they had as many short-handed goals as the Capitals had power-play goals (2) in the sweep.
New York would have a special teams advantage over anyone in the playoffs.
Well, almost anyone.
The Hurricanes had the best penalty kill (86.4%) and second-best power play (26.9%) in the regular season. In the first round against the Islanders, the Canes went 5-for-15 with the man advantage — although they did allow three power-play goals on 11 opportunities to the Islanders.
“As you get deeper in the playoffs, it gets more and more important,” Trouba said. “All the teams at this point have good power plays and good penalty kills.”
Back in their 2022 series, the Rangers’ power play was the difference, with seven goals vs. just two tallies for the Hurricanes. But that Carolina power play wasn’t nearly as good as this one, with Guentzel (11 power-play points in 22 games with the Hurricanes) now on the top unit.
This might be the most even matchup of the series — at least on paper — so to have it tip in either direction could tip the series as well.
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Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
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