RALEIGH — It was fitting that Rod Brind’Amour’s 300th coaching victory was a throwback — the second game of an old-school home-and-home against division rivals who clearly don’t like each other.
An ejection, a separate melee-inducing dirty hit and four Carolina goals in the third period resulted in a 5-2 Hurricanes win Saturday at Lenovo Center.
A day after the Devils earned a 4-2 win on their home ice over Carolina, the Hurricanes needed 39:30 of game time to score their first goal but reeled off four straight in just over 18 minutes of the third period to split the season series with their Metropolitan Division rivals.
“That was one of the craziest games I think I’ve been a part of so far this year,” Hurricanes rookie Jackson Blake said.
Indeed.
Blake’s redirection of a Jesperi Kotkaniemi shot gave Carolina the lead for good at 10:43 of the third, with the goal coming at the tail end of a five-minute major on Devils winger Timo Meier, who was ejected for a knee-on-knee hit to Hurricanes forward Martin Necas.
“I’ve been waiting for a while,” said Blake, who scored for the first time since Nov. 27, his eighth goal of the season, to give Carolina a 3-2 lead. “I wasn’t even counting the games. I was like, ‘All right, let’s just put one in.’”
It ended up being the game-winner — Blake’s fourth of the season — but it was hardly over.
Jack Roslovic finished off a backhand pass by Seth Jarvis — who had the first three-assist game of his career — 83 seconds later to double the Hurricanes’ lead at 12:06. On the following shift, Devils center Erik Haula delivered a high hit on Carolina defensemen Dmitry Orlov.
Orlov was left bleeding on the ice as the teams grappled in the corner. But as Haula was being led to the penalty box, Orlov — who had gone to the bench to towel off his bloody nose — charged Haula and wrestled him to the ground.
“I think it’s a dirty hit,” said Orlov, who ended up with a matching roughing minor. “Yeah, I wasn’t happy with that. I didn’t think it was two minutes; I think it’s more than that. And we got even — I got two minutes too. But I didn’t hit him; I just grabbed him and told him a couple of words, but nothing else.”
The Hurricanes let the scoreboard do the talking in the end. Roslovic added an empty-net goal — his 16th goal of the season — and a message sent that the Hurricanes aren’t yet ready to hand over superiority in the Metro.
“I don’t know if it’s because of the back to back,” Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker, who had two assists, said of the feisty rematch. “I think we just kind of were dominating most of the night, and maybe they were trying to get things going by being a little more physical, and it ended up in a dirty hit.”
There were 82 hits in all — 41 for each team — but that was about the only area of the game that was even.
The Hurricanes outshot New Jersey 41-23, had more than 60% of the 5-on-5 shot attempts, according to NaturalStatTrick.com, and won 61% of the game’s faceoffs — led by Sebastian Aho’s 14-of-17 night.
Still, Carolina found itself down 1-0 in the second period after defenseman Brent Burns’ pass to Kotkaniemi in the neutral zone handcuffed the Carolina center, leading to a breakaway for Paul Cotter. Cotter made a quick move and shot past Dustin Tokarski (21 saves) to make it 1-0 New Jersey at 2:56 of the middle frame.
The Hurricanes got the equalizer with 30 seconds left in the period when a long shift in the offensive zone led to Walker setting up Orlov for a 92.2-mph one-timer that beat Jake Allen (37 saves) for his fourth goal of the year to tie the game 1-1.
“That was huge because we’d been playing really well and probably deserved to be even if not ahead,” Brind’Amour said of the late-period goal. “And we finally got that one to kind of break the ice a little bit and at least allowed us to take a breather.”
The breather was short-lived when Ondrej Palat scored 65 seconds into the third period to restore the Devils’ one-goal lead at 2-1.
The Hurricanes, however, evened the game back up on the following shift when Aho knocked down a clearing attempt to keep the puck in the offensive zone and later snuck a shot past Allen for his 12th goal of the year.
It appeared, however, that Carolina was going to squander three full minutes of power play time afforded by the Meier major — Kotkaniemi was handed a two-minute roughing call for retaliating on Meier after the hit on Necas — until Blake located the Kotkaniemi shot in traffic and tipped it past Allen.
“Anytime you can provide something for your team, it’s very exciting,” Blake said.
And the Hurricanes hope the fact the win came with the team standing up for each other can put the team’s otherwise lackluster December in the rearview mirror.
“It’s good to find a way to win,” said Orlov, who had both nostrils plugged after the Haula hit. “It was not an easy month, not how we want to play, but it’s important in the tough moments to find a way of how we have to play.
“So we did it today, and that’s an important two points. … 100%, you get closer. These games, you have to be physical. If you look at the standings, in our division, everybody is tight. You need to be hungry, angry, and … every time you’re out there, you have to win.”
Blake added, “ If we can play like that the rest of the year, we’ll be a scary team.”
Notes: Shayne Gostisbehere became the first of Carolina’s six regular defensemen to miss a game this season. … Ty Smith played in his place, his first NHL game since Jan. 18, 2023, with Pittsburgh. Smith was a first round pick of the Devils in 2018 and played 114 games with New Jersey. He quarterbacked Carolina’s top power play in Gostisbehere’s absence and logged 16:23 with one shot on goal. … Brett Pesce played his first game back in Raleigh since signing with the Devils in the offseason. Pesce played 627 regular season games over nine seasons with the Hurricanes after being a third round pick by Carolina in the 2013 draft. He briefly left the game after being struck in the face by a puck but returned shortly after. … Brind’Amour earned his 300th win in his 488th game behind the bench, making him the fastest to that milestone in NHL history.
