RALEIGH — For the second straight night, the Hurricanes squandered a multigoal lead and ended up in overtime. On Sunday, it ended with a win.
Carolina held possession for all 85 seconds of 3-on-3, with Sebastian Aho scoring his 18th career overtime goal to beat the Kings 3-2 at Lenovo Center. The win extended the Hurricanes’ point streak to eight games a day after they lost 4-3 to the Capitals in overtime.
Aho carried the puck into the Los Angeles zone, shot from the high slot, and the puck changed direction off Kings forward Adrian Kempe’s stick and past Anton Forsberg (31 saves) for the winner.
“A good thing always to shoot the puck,” Aho said, “and that was the case on that one too.”
The Kings couldn’t shoot the puck much at all against Carolina’s suffocating defense. The Hurricanes held Los Angeles to 13 shots on goal, but two goals in 3:28 of the back half of the third period allowed the visitors to tie the game.
Alexander Nikishin gave Carolina an insurance goal, his seventh of the season, by settling a clearing attempt in the high slot and snapping the puck past Forsberg at 12:57 of the third period. The goal, which extended the lead to 2-0, tied Nikishin with Jamie McBain for the second-most goals by a Hurricanes rookie defenseman, one behind Justin Faulk’s eight.
But Los Angeles responded on the next shift to finally get one of its limited chances past Brandon Bussi (11 saves).
Carolina forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi turned the puck over inside the Kings blue line, and Samuel Helenius scored his third goal of the season on an odd-man rush 24 seconds after Nikishin’s goal to halve the lead.
Then at 16:49, Quinton Byfield converted a far post tap-in off a Kempe feed to knot the score.
“First goal, I kind of lost sight of the puck, and I made a bad decision to kind of throw my leg up or not cover the five-hole,” Bussi said. “And the second goal, I think you just tip your cap to them. I think that’s just a really good play.”
But much of the good play belonged to the home team.
The Hurricanes got out to an early lead by scoring four seconds into the game’s first power play.
Jordan Staal cleanly won the faceoff back to Shayne Gostisbehere, who slid the puck across to Andrei Svechnikov at the right point. Svechnikov zipped a pass into Staal’s range, and he directed the puck past Forsberg for his 13th goal of the season at 6:25 of the first period.
“When you can snap (the faceoff) back, you can run your plays,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said of using Staal on the power play, which went 1 for 4 on the night. “And that’s kind of what we were alluding to earlier, why we put him out there. We were kind of missing that. And we’ve seen it, really, since he’s been in there. There’s been a lot of occasions where that’s happened. Why not keep using him because he’s been very effective.”
Carolina then locked down the Kings’ attack, limiting Los Angeles to four shots in both the first and second periods and five in the third period.
“We were playing a perfect game, exactly how we wanted to do it. … I thought we had the better looks,” Brind’Amour said. “And obviously we were in a good spot. They got a couple, but I love the way we just kept playing.”
In overtime, the Hurricanes never let the visitors have the puck, ending it on Aho’s 19th goal of the season. It also improved Bussi to 21-3-1 as the out-of-nowhere goalie continues to rewrite his own record for wins to start a career.
“It feels good to win,” Bussi said. “We’ve been doing a lot of it, and the goal is to keep on doing it.”
Notes: Eric Robinson (upper-body injury) and Mike Reilly (healthy) did not play for Carolina. … Hurricanes forward William Carrier played in his 500th career game. … Kings captain Anze Kopitar, who announced he will retire at the end of the season, played his final regular season game at Lenovo Center. … Seth Jarvis was held without a shot on goal but had six missed shots and one attempt blocked. The seven shot attempts were the most in his career without recording one on goal.
