Believe it or not, Logan Stankoven has yet to be named the Carolina Hurricanes “Player of the Game” for Canes Country in these playoffs. I’m fixing that right now.
He only led the team in notching goals in round one and scored first in the first three games, tying NHL records for that. But his teammates did so well we had to look somewhere else.
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Not so for Saturday night. He not only scored the first goal of the game again, this time off a nice tip of a Mike Reilly shot, he scored again later in the game giving him a total of six goals in the five playoff games so far this postseason.
Talk about being hot, Stankoven now has a 13 game point streak going back to the final eight games of the regular season. He certainly picked the right time to be hot.
The center opened the scoring just 1:31 into the game with his tip. Later in the period, Jackson Blake made a beautiful move and guided the puck behind goalie, Dan Vladar.
The center scored again in the second period after Andrei Svechnikov broke up a play and got the puck to Seth Jarvis who found Stankoven wide open cross ice. The youngster made no mistake as he beat Vladar bar down to make it 3-0 to virtually end the game in Carolina.
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Not only did he score his two goals, in just 13 minutes of play he also led the team with 5 shots on goal and had a 64% winning percentage in the faceoff circle. (7 of 11).
Honorable mention goes to Fred Andersen, who notched his second shutout in these playoffs. Usually a shutout earns you a “player of the game” shout out, but he had a inactive game for much of it. Through two periods the Flyers only had nine shots on goal. They picked up a lot of offensive zone time and shots when they had a two man advantage late in the game and finished with 19 for the game.
K’Andre Miller continues to shine for Carolina. He made the defensive play of the game when he caught up to Garnet Hathaway who broke free when he got out of the penalty box. Miller dove on the ice and with his long reach, used his stick to knock away the puck from Hathaway before the Flyer could get a shot on goal. The defenseman avoided taking a penalty and also did not slide into his goalie on the perfect play.
Mike Reilly also played well as he substituted for Alexander Nikishin. A decent 7th defenseman is something the Hurricanes missed dearly last year.
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In other news, we will be publishing the new thread for the “Canes Country Pick’em Contest” after the Lightning/Canadiens game tonight. I will leave it open until Carolina’s 7 P.M. start time on Monday night. Hopefully that gives everyone who wants to participate a proper chance. Two second round opening games will be completed by then but everyone is on equal footing so I believe this is the best way to go.
Finally, our own Al Hood was a repeat guest on Adam Gold’s YouTube channel after last night’s game. You can check that out next.
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