The storm has not passed just yet. It continued to hover over the Rangers on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, where the Hurricanes blew through and tore up the third period for a 4-1 win in Game 5 of the second-round series to avoid elimination for a second straight contest.
Carolina will have an opportunity to force Game 7 with a win on Thursday night at PNC Arena.
“Obviously, we want to close out the series, but we put ourselves in a position that we get a couple cracks at it,” captain Jacob Trouba said. “We played good games in Carolina, we know we can play in that building. We’ll go down there and bring a better game.”
The Blueshirts had arguably their worst period of the season in one of the most important periods of the season.
Despite the fact the Rangers were up 1-0 at the start of the final frame, it was obvious just how much more the Canes wanted to keep their season alive compared to how much the home team wanted to finish the job.
The Hurricanes came out of the second intermission with purpose, evening the score on a goal from Jordan Staal just over 3 ¹/₂ minutes into the third.
It was as if Carolina could sense the shakiness in the bones of the Rangers’ structure, and the Hurricanes barreled through it.
Evgeny Kuznetsov then buried one off a juicy rebound before Jordan Martinook scored from in front to leave the Garden crowd deflated by the 9:56 mark of the third.
An empty-netter from Martin Necas made it four straight unanswered goals for the Canes.
“It kind of snowballed quick on us,” Trouba said. “It was a bad period. I think something you look at. It’s different than in the regular season, where you feel bad all night and tomorrow you wake up and you’re upset.
“I think you got to turn the page quick. Yeah, we played a bad period. Now we got to focus on Game 6 and get another chance to close out the series.”
There was a nervous energy in the Garden from puck drop. The fans cheered through it.
It never quite went away, however, since the Blueshirts never quite had the upper hand despite leading by a goal for a majority of the second period.
The Rangers were one step behind on most puck battles and just a few centimeters short with every reach of their sticks.
They gave the Canes way too much space to work with, forcing goalie Igor Shesterkin to come up with more than just a few big stops en route to 24 saves on the night.
Neither team had much luck on the power play, but the Rangers still got the better of the special-teams battle thanks to their offensive-minded penalty kill, which should put the fear of God in any NHL team.
Jumping out on a two-on-one rush with Barclay Goodrow, Trouba kept the puck for himself and wristed one home to open the scoring at the 6:23 mark of the second period.
For once, however, it didn’t matter.
“We’ll address it [Tuesday],” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “It wasn’t a reflection of who we were for a majority of the year. Tonight was not it for us.”
