RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Jordan Staal looks at the Carolina Hurricanes’ on-their-game play as being part of a machine.
One that keeps rolling through its process, over and over, in smothering scoring chances and keeping the pressure on an opponent.
It has them within a win of reaching their first Stanley Cup Final in two decades entering Friday night’s home Game 5 against the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Final.
“Right now, when you get into these grooves, it’s just kind of the machine,” the captain told reporters Thursday morning in Montreal. “You just kind of want to keep it running, keep doing what you’re doing.
“I don’t think the guys will waver too far from the next shift, the next play, the hyper-focus that we’re on.”
The Eastern Conference’s top seed started this series with a jarringly horrid start after going 11 days between playoff rounds — the longest postseason layoff in more than a century — and promptly allowing four goals in the first 11-plus minutes of a 6-2 loss.
Ever since, though, the Hurricanes have gotten more and more to their preferred style that helped them sweep through Ottawa and Philadelphia in the first two playoff rounds. And that has helped them grab control of the series from the on-the-rise Canadiens who arrived at this round earlier than some expected.
Carolina won a pair of 3-2 overtime games, first at home and then on the road, then dominated from the puck drop of Wednesday’s 4-0 road romp that pushed the Hurricanes to a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
The Hurricanes are getting the puck into the offensive zone, using the aggressive forecheck to keep it there and pressure the Canadiens while giving talented goaltender Jakub Dobes a lot of work. The Game 4 win offered a withering case study, with Carolina scoring three goals in a nearly three-minute span of the first period then shutting off everything as the Canadiens tried to regroup.
It wasn’t perfect. Notably there was a nearly two-minute 5-on-3 opportunity in which the Hurricanes didn’t put a shot on Dobes with a chance to knock out the Canadiens midway through the second period.
Not that their coach was dwelling on it.
“I’m not pointing at any negative on this game, no chance,” Rod Brind’Amour said Thursday morning.
Now the pressure is fully on the Canadiens, who battled through two long series that included Game 7 road wins at Tampa Bay and Buffalo while the Hurricanes started 8-0 in the postseason.
Montreal hadn’t lost consecutive games since mid-March and hadn’t lost three straight games since a five-game skid in November.
“Obviously everybody knows where we’re at, we do,” forward Cole Caufield said Thursday after the team arrived in North Carolina.
The Canadiens pounced on the slow-starting Hurricanes in Game 1 by repeatedly getting clean breakouts and breakaways with skaters hitting full speed as they blew unchecked through the neutral zone.
But as this series has worn on, the Canadiens have looked a half-step — sometimes more — behind.
Montreal defenseman Alexandre Carrier said Thursday the focus is down to small details such as winning more 1-on-1 battles, and then building from there to hopefully stop the Hurricanes’ push.
“It’s a big opportunity,” Carrier said. “We’re not dead yet. So it’s important to really be excited for tomorrow and confident. And I’m excited to see what we can do.”
The Hurricanes have more than double the shots on goal (108-43) in the past three games. And while some of that is due to a style that naturally leans into shot volume, the Hurricanes have steadily tightened their defensive grip on a skilled Canadiens team.
The Hurricanes took a 19-3 edge in shots on goal in the third period, keeping the Canadiens pinned in their defensive zone while finishing with a total of 18 shots. That marked the second time in three games that Carolina had more shots on goal in a period than Montreal had for the game, the other in the first period of Game 3 (16-13).
Carolina had a 42-15 edge in high-danger chances for Games 2, 3 and 4, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“We talk about all the time defending as a five-man unit,” Carolina defenseman Jaccob Slavin said. “And our forwards are doing a great job of helping out with that, and allowing us to be tight-gapped, allowing us to be aggressive, allowing us to play the way we have to play.”
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