The Hurricanes rarely have to do more than that. Their enough is good enough when it looks like it has looked through 10 games across two rounds in the playoffs.
They pressure all over the ice as a five-man unit, their opponents’ time and space fleeting, if they ever had it to begin with.
“We’re a lot of just on top of guys,” Staal said. “We just kind of give them the least amount of room and make them turn the puck over so we have the puck, and then when we have the puck we try to move it as quick as we can into their end and grind them out.”
They get sticks in lanes, knocking down pucks, with nobody better at it than defenseman Jaccob Slavin, so much so that Capitals coach Spencer Carbery questioned why he isn’t in the running for the Norris Trophy as the League’s best defenseman every single season.
“They are just relentless with their pressure, and their ability to break plays up with their sticks, there’s no team in the League like it,” Carbery said.
They don’t give up many shots on goal. The Capitals had 19 on Thursday and 96 in five games, an average of 19.2.
In fact, Svechnikov’s goal might not happen without Walker getting his stick on Alex Ovechkin‘s shot from above the right face-off circle 14 seconds earlier, stopping it from being a shot on goal. If he doesn’t, that’s a clean look in space for the greatest goal-scorer in NHL history.
Walker got the puck back, started the rush and set up Svechnikov with a give-and-go.
“Obviously, you shouldn’t give a guy like that that much time and space to begin with, so obviously a little breakdown but really happy I got my stick on it,” Walker said of his block on Ovechkin’s shot. “Actually, it was broke after that play, so I’m really happy it didn’t break when I was making the pass back to ‘Svech.’ All in all, a good shift, for sure.”
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