Stankoven, Andersen star as Carolina forces Game 5 in Raleigh on Wednesday
© Josh Lavallee / Carolina Hurricanes
SUNRISE, Fla. – The Carolina Hurricanes rose to the occasion in a must-win scenario on Monday, keeping their season alive with a 3-0 shutout of the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final.
GAME SUMMARY | BOX SCORE | PLAYOFF TICKETS | PLAYOFF HUB
Carolina’s best start of the series sent the teams into the second period with zeros on both sides of the scoreboard, setting the stage for Logan Stankoven to open the scoring for the visitors midway through the middle frame. The first-year forward took a stretch pass at the Florida blue line from fellow rookie Alexander Nikishin, then rifled a wrister into the short-side top corner, lifting the Canes to their first lead of the series.
From there, Frederik Andersen and the Canes’ PK took over to slam the door on Florida’s third-period push. Three timely kills kept the Cats off the board, and two empty-net tallies from Sebastian Aho and Jordan Staal sealed the Canes’ win.
Andersen returned to action after backing up Pyotr Kochetkov in Game 3, finishing with 20 saves for his second shutout of the playoffs.
CAR at FLA | Recap
There goes that man again 💥 pic.twitter.com/rjHN5D3gjw
Rod Brind’Amour on his team’s performance in Game 4…
“Right from the start, we were good all night. It was how we need to play if we’re going to have a chance and we gave ourselves a chance. That’s all you can ask. Everything was solid. Goalie was great when he needed to be. Obviously the penalty kill was phenomenal. That was obviously more like it.”
Frederik Andersen on the Canes playing more to their identity on Monday…
“I think we haven’t seen a lot of that in this series so far. We wanted to leave it all out there and play our best game. We got rewarded tonight, so it was fun…I think we were closer to our game, and I think we’re a pretty good team when we do play our game. We need more of that, but this was a good step.”
Sebastian Aho on the Canes’ penalty kill coming up clutch…
“You definitely can gain some momentum off the kills, and obviously we had some big ones in big moments of the game. Freddie was unreal, I felt like he saw every puck and every puck somehow looked like an easy save, but definitely wasn’t. Killers were really good today, and that’s probably one of the reasons we won.”
Logan Stankoven on what getting the first win in the series means…
“It’s just what you can do, start with one and go from there. We just try to preach about winning a period and going from there, and I think it was nice to get the lead tonight as well, and play on our toes instead of on our heels. It’s just day by day, you can’t look too far ahead, and we know we’ve got a long way to go still.”
Jordan Staal on Logan Stankoven’s impact in the series…
“He’s got a lot of fight in his game. He doesn’t quit on any pucks, he’s tenacious and he’s a Hurricane through and through. He got us going tonight, but even last game, he was our best player, and throughout this whole series, like you said, he’s been our best player. Hopefully we won’t [have to] continue to rely on him, but hopefully he keeps playing that way and we can get some other guys building off of that too.”
Jaccob Slavin on how much pride was a factor in the team’s play in Game 4…
“All of us in this room are professionals for a reason and we’re going to give it our best shot. There’s a lot of pride in our game from the season that we’ve had and the work ethic we put in all year to put three games out there like we did and then to come work tonight extremely hard, obviously we all take pride in that. We just have to keep doing it together.”
Logan Stankoven is 22 years old and already has two conference finals under his belt…
Now he has the GWG in G4 to keep the Canes alive ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/AMaPFYUCCs
Text “PLAYOFFS25” to (919) 705-0896 to receive the postseason’s biggest moments, breaking news, and more delivered directly to your phone.
