Five takeaways from the Carolina Hurricanes’ 2-1 road victory Thursday over the Anaheim Ducks, ending the Ducks’ eight-game winning streak:
-- No doubt about the game’s first star. Rookie Seth Jarvis had the winning goal -- again -- but it was Frederik Andersen’s night. Well-rested after six days off, the goalie was back in the crease at the Honda Center, where he once played so well for the Ducks. He was sharp, he was focused and he had a slew of high-quality saves among his 31 stops to stymie the Ducks, the hottest team in the league.
“We weren’t good and he allowed us to hang in there and kind of build our game,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “I don’t think we were ever great in this game but he was.”
—Jarvis, headed back to junior hockey? Nope. Those days are over. He’s staying -- for now, on the Canes’ top line with Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov.
Jarvis was stopped on a penalty shot, his first in the NHL, by goalie John Gibson in the third but later scored to push the Canes ahead 2-1 with a shot from behind the net that glanced off Gibson. He has three goals in his eight games and had two goals disallowed.
Jarvis said he used the “20-second rule” after missing on the penalty shot. “I think about it for 20 seconds, get mad about it and then let it go,” he said. “You can’t dwell on things.”
He didn’t.
—For almost two periods, this was more like the jet-lag game for the Canes, who had plenty of jump Tuesday at Las Vegas put appeared to drag at times against the Ducks. That changed in the third, when the Canes (13-2-0) made their push to win and improve to 7-1 on the road, the best in the NHL.
“I think the guys come to play and for the year I think we’ve had one stinker,” Brind’Amour said. “Tonight was a stinker to start but we got to our game and our goalie kept us in it..”
Andersen (10-2-0) faced 17 shots in the first, the most against the Canes in a period this season. The Canes got out of the period with a 1-1 tie as defenseman Ethan Bear scored his first with Carolina, and it was 1-1 entering the third as Andersen continued to turn away shots and the Canes had some strong penalty kills in the second.
—The Canes have a stouter look on the back end with Brett Pesce in the lineup. The D pairs fit together well with Pesce playing with Brady Skjei, Bear with Jaccob Slavin and Ian Cole with Tony DeAngelo.
It just feels right. Brendan Smith did his part filling in for an injured Pesce and had a game-winning goal against the St. Louis Blues, but Pesce solidifies the lineup. Smith does give the Canes experienced depth and will be needed again.
—The Ducks (10-5-3) look a lot like the Canes, with a veteran center who’s the captain (Ryan Getzlaf), a young scoring forward (Troy Terry), sound D corps and a nice mix of older and younger guys.
They pressure the puck, stay aggressive, play with an edge and appear to have few weak links in the lineup. “We’ll take the win,” Brind’Amour said. “They’re the hottest team in the league and you can see why. They’re really fast and you could tell they were really confident in what they were doing. The game had a little of everything. Had a lot of grind in there, some good physical play.”
