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Hurricanes surge to 4-2 win over Panthers

Posted on by Todd Little

Sebastian Aho scored the game-winning goal and added an assist, and the Carolina Hurricanes extended their winning streak to five games by doubling up the Florida Panthers by a 4-2 count at PNC Arena on Sunday.

Former Panther Vincent Trocheck tallied for the fourth straight game against his old team, opening the scoring with a nifty power-play goal with 4:05 left in the first period, with the assists going to Andrei Svechnikov and Dougie Hamilton. Jordan Staal beat Alex Wennberg on the offensive zone faceoff and four passes later, Trocheck, left alone in front, cashed in just eight seconds after Mason Marchment was sent off for slashing.

The Hurricanes would go up by two at 4:52 of the second when Nino Niederreiter beat Chris Driedger with a wrist shot from the left circle after taking a pass from Martin Necas, who did most of the heavy lifting by lugging puck up ice.

MacKenzie Weegar pulled one back for the Panthers midway though the frame, pounding the puck by James Reimer after a faceoff win by Noel Acciari, who collected his first assist of the season.

Weegar’s goal set the stage for what looked to another exciting finish between the Cats and Canes, but Carolina got a shorthanded goal from Aho 38 seconds into the third off a 2-on-1 situation, and another at the 3:41 mark when Warren Foegele bulled his way past Wennberg to beat Driedger five-hole to pull away.

Marchment netted the final goal of the game at 9:09 by going to the net to easily put away a Jonathan Huberdeau feed, capping off a nice series of passes that saw Aleksander Barkov pick up the secondary assist to extend his point streak to six games. That’s two goals in the last three games for Marchment.

Once again, the Panthers managed to come up short against Carolina A late second period pad save by Reimer on Huberdeau and the deflating shorty by Aho helped swing the game in a 42-second span of action. The Cats, who looked a bit sluggish after pounding Nashville on Saturday, managed just 23 shots on goal against the fresher Hurricanes. Six minor penalties and an 0 for 5 performance on the power play didn’t help matters either. Not the end of the world, that’s just Florida’s second road loss in regulation this season. They are 2-1 on this current trip and can make it a successful one with win or two against middling Columbus this week.

Sand Bags & Shutters

  • Keith Yandle played in his 1,000th NHL game, becoming the 12th player in history to play their 1,000th NHL game with the Panthers. The native of Boston, MA, became the 352nd NHL player, 116th defenseman, 52nd U.S.-born player and the 19th U.S.-born defenseman to reach the 1,000 games played milestone.
  • In addition to notching his second of the season, MacKenzie Weegar registered a team-high (tied with Radko Gudas) four hits.
  • Sebastian Aho’s shorthanded goal was his 10th in the NHL to tie head coach Rod Brind’Amour for third in Hurricanes/Hartford Whalers history behind Eric Staal (16) and Dave Tippett (11).
  • Jonathan Huberdeau extended his point streak to three games (2G/3A). Huberdeau has produced two goals and four points in two games at PNC Arena this season.
  • Chris Driedger finished with 22 saves and lost his third straight start. James Reimer stopped 21 shots to earn his 11th win of the season.
  • Other Hurricanes with assists not mentioned above were Jordan Martinook, Jaccob Slavin and Brock McGinn.
  • For the other side of round four between Florida and Carolina, visit Canes Country./

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