RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — For the second straight year, the Carolina Hurricanes failed to win a game in their last postseason series until on the edge of elimination.
This time, it ended their season in another Eastern Conference final — the stage proving to be a roadblock in their multiyear Stanley Cup push.
The Hurricanes fell 5-3 to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night in Game 5, sending the Panthers back to the sport's final stage for the third straight year while ending Carolina's latest lengthy playoff grind short of the ultimate goal.
And it ended in a similar fashion to the previous year: with Carolina losing the first three games of a series, spending multiple games trying to dig out of that massive hole and then losing a two-goal lead at home in the game that ultimately ended their season.
“I think essentially we lost in the first few games,” Carolina captain Jordan Staal said. “You can’t start a series like that and expect a better outcome.”
A year ago, it was an 0-3 series deficit to the Presidents' Trophy-winning New York Rangers in the second round. The Hurricanes regrouped to win two elimination games and carried a 3-1 lead into the third period of a Game 6 at home, only to see the Rangers surge back behind Chris Kreider's hat trick in the final 20 minutes in a 5-3 victory.
This time, it was an 0-3 series deficit to the the reigning Stanley Cup champion, a tested and deep team unafraid to play and surpass Carolina's aggressive-forechecking approach. And it ended with a matching final score.
“We knew it was going to be a big task to try to beat them,” said Carolina’s Sebastian Aho, who had two first-period goals Wednesday that put the Hurricanes ahead. “We truly believe we have what it takes, but obviously we fell short yet again."
By the final horn, Carolina's lamentations went back to losing the first two games at home, the second being a 5-0 blowout in which the Panthers were shockingly dominant and the Hurricanes' normally rowdy fans were left to frustratedly chant “Shoot the puck! Shoot the puck!”
“Those first two games you’d probably want back, but it’s too little, too late,” said Seth Jarvis, who had a tying goal midway through the third period before Florida made its go-ahead move on Carter Verhaeghe's score. “And that's kind of the result of it.”
By Game 3, Carolina had seen a 1-1 game entering the third mushroom into a 6-2 loss for their 15th straight loss in a conference final going back to sweeps in 2009, 2019 and the 2023 one against these Panthers. The Hurricanes regrouped to win Game 4 on the road and avert another sweep, but they faced a long climb to accomplish the improbable.
Carolina jumped to a 2-0 lead with Aho twice putting Panthers giveaways in the neutral zone into the net behind Sergei Bobrovsky. But the Panthers flurry of three goals on consecutive second-period shots — two coming in a 30-second span — erased that deficit and silenced a roaring crowd giddy by Carolina's start.
While the Hurricanes responded with Seth Jarvis' tying goal midway through the third, the dynamic of the game had completely changed after a flurry coach Rod Brind'Amour called “a backbreaker.”
“You could just feel us — it's just natural, the building, everything, it kind of sucked a little bit of life out of us,” he said.
Carolina's five-week playoff push had included five-game series wins against the New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals, the latter being this year's top seed in the Eastern Conference. Yet the Hurricanes went from going 5-0 at home in those two series to losing all three home games against the Panthers.
Carolina has won at least one postseason series in its current run of seven straight playoff appearances, though three have now ended in the Eastern final.
“We've had slow starts in the series, when it gets to the top four teams, they're great teams, and having a slow start is never great,” Staal said.
“Obviously we always believe in the group when we get here and coming up short is never easy, and it doesn't get any easier. We'll just try to get better and try again.”
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Aaron Beard, The Associated Press
