The Carolina Hurricanes and Philadelphia Flyers will be seeing a lot of each other over the next few days.
The Hurricanes and Flyers have a home-and-home series over the weekend, beginning with Saturday’s matchup in Philadelphia.
Carolina enters with five wins in its last seven games, including an exciting 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Thursday. The Hurricanes trailed with under three minutes remaining before Logan Stankoven tied it, paving the way for a shootout win.
“We were kind of on our heels the whole (third) period,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “But give the guys a lot of credit — they found a way to tie it up, and then our goaltending was great tonight again. So, that allowed us to pull it out.”
The goaltender that Brind’Amour referred to was dynamic rookie Brandon Bussi, who made 23 saves and then three more stops in the shootout to improve to 10-1-0 with a 2.07 goals-against average. The 27-year-old has allowed just seven goals over his last five games.
“We’re playing good hockey,” Bussi said. “So, it’s nice to be a small part of it, coming up when I need to, but ultimately, we’re playing really good hockey. It makes my life easy.”
Philadelphia is coming off an exciting contest, as well, although the Flyers were on the wrong end of the final result. The team went to overtime against the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday before Travis Konecny’s defensive-zone turnover led to a 3-2 defeat.
“It’s a little disappointing how it ended,” Flyers coach Rick Tocchet said. “Sour taste. The play at the end, and the power play, but other than that … we had some guys have some tough nights, but we hung in there.”
Philadelphia’s power play is 4-for-32 over the last 13 games. The team went 0-for-3 with the man advantage in the loss to Vegas.
“We had a good game, so I don’t want to get negative, but the power play, we’re not getting middle shots,” Tocchet said. “We’ve got to get a middle shot. Other than Trevor (Zegras), our flanks are having a tough time making a play. We’re not using the middle of the ice. Coaches are a little frustrated. It’s a broken record because we practice it, and for some reason, when the pressure hits, we kind of lose our bearings. It’s not just one guy; it’s everybody. But we’ve got to keep grinding away.”
This weekend will mark the second and third meetings of a four-game season series between the Flyers and Hurricanes. The teams met back on Oct. 11 with Carolina’s Seth Jarvis scoring the decisive goal in overtime, shortly after Philadelphia’s apparent OT winner was overturned due to goalie interference.
Carolina has won six straight matchups against the Flyers.
–Field Level Media
