RALEIGH — The grind is over. It’s also just beginning.
The Hurricanes and Senators meet for Game 1 of their first round playoff series Saturday at 3 p.m. at Lenovo Center, a matchup of two teams that mirror each other in many ways.
The last few days of analysis, stat-crunching and comparisons go out the window once the puck drops.
1. Every series comes down to goaltending, but this one should be particularly spicy.
Carolina has options: Frederik Andersen is the battle-tested-yet-uncrowned veteran, while Brandon Bussi’s glass slipper might still have some sparkle in it. And then Pyotr Kochetkov is lurking in the background, an option the Hurricanes can go to if things get desperate.
Coach Rod Brind’Amour appears to first be going with Andersen, who was in the starter’s crease the final two days of practice before Game 1. Not that he was outright saying when I asked him with the final question of Friday’s press conference whether he had definitively chosen his Game 1 starter.
“Actually, this is the truth. I was just trying to get ahold of (goalie coach Paul Schonfelder) because I knew — I give you guys credit, you didn’t ask that out of the gate, but I didn’t get to see him because he was having lunch,” the coach said to a chorus of chuckles from the media. “So you guys are going to have to sit on that.”
Andersen, stoic as ever, said he’s confident in how he’s playing given his struggles earlier this season.
“I like where my game’s at,” he said after Thursday’s practice. “Just try to build every day and continue to work in good habits. I know what it feels like when I’m feeling well — just continue to search for that every day.”
2. It won’t hurt Andersen — or any of Carolina’s goalies — to have a healthy Jaccob Slavin defending in front of them. Slavin played 39 games — and six in the Olympics — this season due to an undisclosed lower-body injury, and he admitted Thursday to feeling “fresh” heading into the postseason.
“I didn’t play half the season, right?” he said. “And so my body feels good right now, legs — I feel fresh. I feel like I’ve only played half a season. … You just don’t have the wear and tear you have on your body like you do when you play 82 games in a year.”
Brind’Amour would never choose to be without Slavin for half the year, but there is a benefit to his shutdown defender not having as much tread worn off his tires heading into the postseason.
“If you told me at the start of the year that we were going to miss him 40 games, that’s not how you want to draw it up,” Brind’Amour said.
The Hurricanes were 28-7-4 with Slavin in the lineup this season — a 126-point pace. That includes a 17-2-1 record at Lenovo Center when Brind’Amour had final change.
3. I was hoping to catch up with Warren Foegele before the series, but the Senators opted to practice in Ottawa on Friday and then fly to Raleigh. With the afternoon start, neither team will skate in the morning.
Foegele was with Carolina when the turnaround happened. T.J. Oshie, now retired and a broadcaster, still seems to hold a grudge that Foegele knocked him out of the 2019 first round series between the Hurricanes and Capitals with a questionable shove from behind in Game 4. Carolina won that series on Brock McGinn’s double-overtime goal in Game 7, ending Washington’s reign as champions.
That feels like forever ago. Only five players — Staal, Slavin, Jordan Martinook, Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svevchnikov — remain from the team that went to the Eastern Conference final in Brind’Amour’s first year as coach.
Foegele was traded to Edmonton in exchange for defenseman Ethan Bear in the summer of 2021. After three seasons with the Oilers, Foegele signed with the Kings, scoring 24 goals last season in his first year in Los Angeles. But he struggled this season and was shipped to Ottawa, where he performed well down the stretch for the Senators.
Svechnikov was pretty tight with Foegele back in the day, a friendship that has since drifted apart as time — seven years since that magical win over the Capitals — passed and players moved on.
“We talked for a few years after that but don’t really talk anymore,” Svechnikov said. “Last probably couple years, we don’t really talk. It’s fine — obviously we played together and were close together, but I just feel at this point, it doesn’t matter. I don’t really have friends on that team. And that’s how it is. You go to the playoffs, you’ve only got your boys, your family, and you don’t really have friends out there.”
Brind’Amour echoed that.
“When guys kind of started with you, you’re always rooting for him a little bit,” he said. “Not going to be rooting for him this time around.”
4. The other link Svechnikov has to the Senators is Brady Tkachuk. Svechnikov was the second overall pick in the 2018 draft, and Ottawa selected Tkachuk two choices later at No. 4.
They’re two of the sport’s few remaining power forwards, players who can impact the game with scoring and physicality.
Their career numbers are pretty similar, with Tkachuk holding a slight edge. In 572 regular season games, the Senators captain has 213 goals, 463 points and 821 penalty minutes. Svechnikov has 182 goals, 434 points and 493 PIMs in 557 games. Svechnikov, however, has played 11 times as many playoff games (66) as Tkachuk (6).
The duo will likely always be compared, and that should ramp up with this series, but Svechnikov isn’t concerned with that storyline.
“I don’t really care about this stuff,” Svechnikov said. “We’ve been in a league for eight years, and we’ve got our roles with the teams. I wouldn’t really compare us. But obviously it’s going to be a good series. They play physical. He plays physical. And we’re going to bring that as well, and I’m going to bring that as well.”
The biggest difference between the two in the aforementioned stats is penalty minutes, and much of that comes from fighting. Svechnikov has three major penalties in his career, while Tkachuk has 41. That’s nearly a 200-PIMs swing on its own, and Tkachuk also has 18 misconducts to Svechnikov’s one.
With all that swept out of the way, Tkachuk has 39 more minors (276 to 237) than Svechnikov. For as much as Svechnikov has been criticized for his discipline, Tkachuk has had an even tougher time staying out of the box.
“It’s very important,” Svechnikov said of balancing physically with discipline. “It’s probably the hardest thing. You play physical, you’re going to get penalties at some point, but you’ve just got to be disciplined. It’s very important, especially against those guys. They’ve got a good power play, and we’re going to have to be disciplined.”
5. That brings us to the penalty kill. Ottawa’s isn’t great — 29th in the league for the season — but has been more respectable down the stretch.
So has Carolina’s.
The Hurricanes’ PK didn’t reach the depths of the Senators’ unit, but it hovered near the middle of the pack when Slavin was on the shelf.
“It’s rounding into form,” Slavin said of a penalty kill that’s been fourth best in the league since he returned to the lineup full time in mid-January. “We’re going up against a good test here in Ottawa. They’ve got a really dynamic power play. So I think first and foremost, we’ve got to stay out of the penalty box.”
Both teams have good power plays, so remaining disciplined, staying out of the penalty box and getting kills when you do end up down a man will be essential to winning the series.
“When we do take penalties, we’ve got to get the job done,” Slavin said. “That’s what (assistant coach Tim Gleason) talks about all the time. We’ve got the right personnel, the right method to do that. We’ve just got to go out and execute.”
