Two teams coming off confidence-boosting wins meet Thursday when the Carolina Hurricanes visit the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Hurricanes ended a two-game losing streak (0-0-2) on Tuesday by scoring five unanswered goals in knocking off the top team in the Western Conference, the Vegas Golden Knights, 6-3.
“It was nice to see us get rewarded,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “All year, the pucks haven’t been going in, and (Tuesday) they did.
“I think it’s good for the guys. I think we’ve been playing really well lately. It’s just (been) tough finding the net.”
The Hurricanes are 4-4-2 in December. In those six losses, they have scored 13 goals — and five of those came in one game.
One of their goals, the game-opener, against Vegas came from Andrei Svechnikov, who returned after missing six games because of an upper-body injury.
“It gave me a little confidence,” Svechnikov said.
The win gave Carolina a five-game point streak (3-0-2), its longest of the season.
Also riding a point streak is Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov, who is 3-0-1 in his past four starts. He made 30 saves Tuesday, and the three goals he allowed came after he yielded just one in each of his past three games.
Kochetkov has been holding things together while Frederik Andersen has been out since early November because of a blood clot issue.
“It comes down to, your goalie has to be as good or better than the other (goalie),” Brind’Amour said. “(Kochetkov’s) last four games, he’s been lights-out. It allows us to keep playing our game, whether we get goals or not. You can’t say enough about it.”
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is coming off a 4-3 win against the Minnesota Wild on Monday.
Not only did the Penguins bounce back from perhaps the worst loss in the coach Mike Sullivan era, a 7-0 pasting on Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs, but they also withstood a strong Wild comeback.
After Pittsburgh built a 3-0 lead, Minnesota scrambled back to tie it in the third before Penguins captain Sidney Crosby scored the decisive goal 47 seconds later.
“Getting the lead, not having to chase the game, that’s an important part,” Crosby said. “It would’ve been nice to put it away a little bit and not allow them to come back … (but) we’ll just try to keep building here.”
Crosby, 36, leads the team with 18 goals and is second with 33 points. He had a goal and an assist against Minnesota, giving him 1,535 career points and moving him into 13th place alone on the NHL’s all-time list, four points behind Joe Thornton for 12th place.
Crosby had four points in two games before getting blanked and finishing with a plus-minus of minus-three in the debacle at Toronto.
Pittsburgh has been inconsistent this season and is below the playoff cutoff. Sullivan is hoping the bounce-back game Monday serves as a lasting eye-opener.
“I wouldn’t say there were a lot of conversations (after Saturday’s loss); there were a couple of candid ones,” Sullivan said. “We’re in this thing together, the coaches and the players. There’s a partnership there. We’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got to do our job as a coaching staff to bring some solutions to the table.”
–Field Level Media
