Vincent Trocheck scored again against his former team, as Alex Nedeljkovic blanked the Panthers to propel the Hurricanes to the top of the NHL standings.
Game Flow
The game started out very even, with both teams getting a lot of opportunities early in the game. Carolina’s No. 1 power-play unit in the league, which is at 28.9%, got to work early in the period. It would lead to the ice-breaker, with Sebastian Aho getting the goal. It was Aho’s 300th NHL point to give the Hurricanes an early lead.
The second period was still a very even game, as both teams seemed to get the same amount of hits, shots on goal, and face-off wins. But there was one team that could connect, and that was Carolina. They would add a 2nd goal in the period to go up 2-0. Vincent Trocheck put it in the net from the back-side. Martin Necas and Brady Skjei got the assist. Vincent Trocheck, the former Florida Panther, has scored six goals in six games against his former team.
Carolina got the final goal (empty-netter) with 51 seconds remaining, courtesy of Martin Necas.
Joel Quenneville on the team’s loss: “We didn’t generate much, I look over the course of the season, and at Game 41 I think maybe we’ve had, you could argue, maybe one other game in this category, or maybe this was our first in this category. We tried, but we weren’t very good.”
Florida’s Chris Driedger had 19 out of 21 saves (90.5%). Meanwhile, Carolina’s Alex Nedeljkovic stopped all 24 shots he faced (100%).
For Florida, they will look to bounce back on Saturday against the Dallas Stars at 2:00 PM EST.