Nine Seconds

The Metropolitan Division might be the weakest division in hockey this season. Yes, I'm aware the New York Rangers and the Carolina Hurricanes are legitimate Stanley Cup contenders, but the gap between the second-place Hurricanes and third-place New York Islanders was a 17-point chasm between the two teams. Only the Washington Capitals made the playoffs with less points than the Islanders, yet a few pundits went on record stating that the Islanders had a shot at upsetting the Hurricanes despite that 17-point difference. Clearly, I disagree with these pundits, but tonight may have been the perfect example of why the Metropolitan Division's third-place team had zero chance in winning this series.

Trailing 1-0 in the series, the New York Islanders jumped out to a 3-0 lead in Game Two this evening before the Hurricanes broke out of their slumber in the second period. In what looked like an all-out commitment to defence, the Islanders seemed to wilt under intense pressure from the Hurricanes as Carolina outshot New York 29-5 through the final two periods. That shot advantage pulled the Hurricanes within one goal at 10:43 of the third period as Teuvo Teravainen and Seth Jarvis cut into the deficit, but the final three minutes were bonkers.

I'm not setting this one up. I'll let the video do all the talking.
Holy chaos, Batman. Sebastian Aho whacked home the puck at 17:45 to make it a 3-3 game off the Andrei Svechnikov partial fan on his one-timer, and Jordan Martinook would capitalize on a mistake by the Islanders' Noah Dobson nine seconds later to put the Hurricanes up 4-3 when he banked the puck in off Semyon Varlamov. Add in an empty-net goal by Jake Guentzel, and the Hurricanes hold a 2-0 series lead after their 5-3 win tonight over the stunned New York Islanders.

According to the NHL statisticians, Carolina sent 110 shot attempts towards Varlamov while the Islanders sent just 28 pucks towards Freddie Andersen. The final tally was a 39-12 shot count in favour of the Hurricanes, but this is the kind of disparity between these two teams that should have been obvious. How anyone believed that the Islanders were going to win four of seven games against the Hurricanes is a mystery, but it was clear tonight that the Islanders are going to have to do a lot more to simply win one game.

Despite it only being Game Two, tonight's game may be the one that broke the Islanders for the remainder of this series. All it took was nine seconds of play and two Hurricanes goals in that span, but the Islanders held a lead for 57:45 of tonight's game before losing by two goals. I'm not sure there's a lot that Patrick Roy can say to his team that will change its fortunes, but the Hurricanes showed everyone tonight that they'll make a team pay if it makes mistakes and takes its foot off the gas pedal.

Usain Bolt ran the 100-metre race in a world record time of 9.63 seconds at the 2012 London Olympic Games. The Carolina Hurricanes may have crushed the New York Islanders' hopes of an upset in about the same span of time this evening.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!