Carolina Hurricanes vs. New York Islanders: 2024 Stanley Cup playoff series preview and pick

Credit: Dennis Schneidler-USA TODAY Sports

Carolina Hurricanes: 2nd in Metropolitan Division, 111 points*

New York Islanders: 3rd in Metropolitan Division, 92 points*

* – with one game remaining

Schedule (ET)

Date	Game	Time
Saturday, April 20	1. New York at Carolina	5 p.m. ET
Monday, April 22	2. New York at Carolina	7:30 p.m. ET
Thursday, April 25	3. Carolina at New York	7:30 p.m. ET
Saturday, April 27	4. Carolina at New York	2 p.m. ET
Tuesday, April 30	5. New York at Carolina	TBD
Thursday, May 2	6. Carolina at New York	TBD
Saturday, May 4	7. New York at Carolina	TBD

The Skinny

When the NHL adopted its current division-centric playoff format, it threw gasoline at already red-hot rivalries like Penguins-Capitals, Bruins-Maple Leafs, and perhaps the most violent, hate-filled clash of them all, Islanders-Hurricanes. Not buying it? Fine. Still, when the teams throw down as the Metropolitan Division’s first and second runners-up (never mind the 20-point gap), it will be their third playoff meeting in the past six seasons and second-consecutive first-round clash.

Though the Carolina Hurricanes possess a near-identical record as their 2022-23 vintage, much has changed in the past year. After power forward Andrei Svechnikov tore his ACL on March 11, those Canes limped into the postseason with a 9-8-1 record and just 2.72 goals per game. This season, there are no paper tiger accusations.

Since Pyotr Kochetkov shook off a slow start in net (.900 SV% before Jan. 1), Carolina has dominated. The Hurricanes have the best points percentage, penalty kill, and scoring defense in the NHL since then. Their offense has more than held up its end of the bargain (5th in goals, 2nd in PP%), and with Stanley Cup winners Dmitry Orlov and Jake Guentzel on board, it finally feels like this team is all-in.

For the Islanders, there has also been change. Coach Lane Lambert never filled the shoes of his mentor Barry Trotz, and notoriously temperamental Hall-of-Fame goaltender Patrick Roy replaced him just after the midway point of the season.

New York allowed just 13 goals during the eight-game April heater that secured its playoff spot, and, despite a league-worst penalty kill, is among the top-10 stingiest teams since Roy took over. The Islanders did what they had to in order to outlast a weak field in the Metropolitan, but can their feisty D make up for another year of bland offense (24th in scoring, 19th in PP%)? No team with so few wins has advanced to the Stanley Cup Final since 1991.

Head to Head

Carolina Hurricanes: 2-1-1

New York Islanders: 2-1-1

This series split between division rivals couldn’t mean much less in the context of the playoffs; two of the four meetings came before Lambert’s firing, and the third was just Roy’s second game in charge of the Islanders.

The Canes rolled 4-1 in Long Island behind a three-point night from Guentzel in the teams’ only meeting after Roy settled in and Kochetkov cleaned up his act.

Top Five Scorers

Carolina

Sebastian Aho, 89 points
Jake Guentzel, 77 points (25 with Hurricanes)
Seth Jarvis, 67 points
Teuvo Teravainen, 53 points
Martin Necas, 53 points

NY Islanders

Mathew Barzal, 80 points
Noah Dobson, 70 points
Bo Horvat, 68 points
Brock Nelson, 67 points
Kyle Palmieri, 52 points

X-Factor

Guentzel, Guentzel, Guentzel. The Hurricanes badly needed another offensive difference maker when they lost four straight one-goal games to the Florida Panthers in the 2023 Eastern Conference Final, and few players make as much of a difference in the postseason as Guentzel.

Since the diminutive forward announced himself to the league with 13 playoff goals during the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 2017 Stanley Cup run, only five players have more postseason tallies than Guentzel’s 34, none of whom needed fewer than 19 additional games to beat his mark.

For those who believe playoff pedigree is an arbitrary science (it’s not), consider that Guentzel is playing the best hockey of his life regardless of the time of year. His 94-point pace is comfortably a career-best, and his career-worst 12.6% conversion rate (we should all be so lucky) has necessitated growth as a playmaker; the 29-year-old’s 47 assists are a career-high despite 14 injury absences.

Sebastian Aho’s two-way dominance (89P, 54.1FO%, +34) has dismantled the notion that Carolina is a team without stars all season. Guentzel’s arrival at the deadline drove the point home, and his play in Raleigh (25 P in 17 GP) has ensured that this go-round talent will not be a problem for the Hurricanes.

Offense

Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour isn’t messing around with his top line and has deployed Guentzel alongside Aho and breakout star Seth Jarvis (33 G, 67 P) over the past month. The trio has developed explosive chemistry since its formation in March, combining for 31 goals and 51 points in only 15 games as a unit.

Things aren’t quite as clear elsewhere in the lineup. Evgeny Kuznetsov (7 P in 20 GP for Carolina) has failed to develop chemistry with Martin Necas and Teuvo Teravainen. Though ‘Rod the Bod’ has shuffled the former Capital down to a defensively conscious fourth line, Jack Drury is a better fit in a shutdown role, and the talented trio will likely get another shot in the playoffs.

Svechnikov, meanwhile, has embraced his role on a big, mean unit with captain Jordan Staal and Jordan Martinook without sacrificing offense (6 P in last 5 GP). The Canes have more skilled wingers than top-six roles to fill, and a Staal line that can score is almost unfair for the other guys.

As for the Islanders, if their respectable top-five scorers seem out of step with their bottom-10 offense, consider that scorer No. 6, Captain Anders Lee, has just 37 points going into the postseason. Still, New York has options.

Bo Horvat has developed solid chemistry with an increasingly aggressive Mat Barzal (career-high 23 G) in his first full season as an Islander, and Roy has paired the two with Casey Cizikas on the top line. Cizikas, the longtime center for Cal Clutterbuck and Matt Martin on a pesky checking trio, digs out pucks for his more talented linemates, and it’s working; the relatively new combination is dictating well over 60 percent of scoring chances.

Like Barzal and Horvat, Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri have been more or less inseparable all season. Nelson is criminally underrated and, after a third-consecutive season with at least 33 goals, his 107 tallies since the start of 2021-22 put him ahead of Guentzel and even Sidney Crosby.

Hudson Fasching plays the Cizikas role on the Nelson line, and placing a couple of grinders in the top six gives Roy the ability to play Lee with penalty killer Jean-Gabriel Pageau (11 G, 33 P) and rangy skater Pierre Engvall (10 G, 28 P) on a third line that at least offers some threat.

Dobson’s offensive production (seventh among defensemen in scoring) has been a story all year, and journeyman blueliner Mike Reilly deserves some credit for providing a bit of scoring pop (24 P in 59 GP) from the lower rungs of the lineup.

Defense

Brind’Amour has never finished a season as a head coach without a top-six scoring defense, but 2023-24 might be the former Selke winner’s magnum opus. The Hurricanes were 16th in scoring defense on Jan. 1 due partly to veteran goaltender Antti Raanta’s implosion (3.61 GAA, .854 SV% in 14 games before being waived). They’ll finish in the top three for the third consecutive season anyway.

Jaccob Slavin is one of the few true shutdown defensemen left in the modern game. Though Brady Skjei (47) leads ageless wonder Brent Burns (43) in points this season, Burns’s ability to move the puck up the ice is one of the reasons teams struggle so badly to maintain zone time against Carolina’s top pair. In more than 1,100 minutes of shared ice time, Slavin and Burns dictate better than 59% of high-danger chances.

Skjei and Brett Pesce have a similar dynamic on the second pair and could occupy the top unit on many teams. The same is true for Orlov and Jalen Chatfield, who don’t usually crack the 20-minute mark; they are one of three full-time pairs in the NHL with a higher share of expected goals than Slavin and Burns. The others? Dallas’ Harley-Heiskanen and Edmonton’s Ekholm-Bouchard. With their third pair keeping elite company, the Canes have a true embarrassment of riches.

As for the forward help, Staal has a higher share of high-danger chances (66.04%) and expected goals (63.07%) than any other player in the NHL. More than Barkov, more than McDavid, more than anyone. His usual linemates Martinook and Jesper Fast, whom Svechnikov replaced, are in the top seven of both categories. If any iteration of the Staal line sics Horvat’s unit, this could be a long (or rather, very short) series for the Islanders.

The Islanders’ top pair of Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov cannot achieve those sorts of puck possession stats on a team where everyone’s metrics scuffled under Lambert, but they have their merits. They break even in most possession stats, which is more than forgivable considering that the Islanders have faced the fourth-most shots in the NHL this year. Dobson has stolen the headlines, but the heavy-hitting Romanov has been equally impressive (team-leading +23) as his stay-at-home counterpart.

The wild card for New York’s defense is the once-great unit of Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock. The numbers don’t look great for two players who have lost a combined 48 games to injury and spent most of the season cycling through unfamiliar partners, but Pelech and Pulock aren’t as old (29) as their wear and tear would suggest. If they can turn the clock back to the 2020 and 2021 final-four runs that established them as a shutdown pair, the Isles become a threat.

Goaltending

Brind’Amour is not sentimental enough to stick with who brought him to the dance, and Kochetkov’s respectable numbers (23-11-4, .911 SV%) aren’t good enough to keep Frederik Andersen (13-2-3, .932 SV%) out of the lineup. Since returning from the scary blood clot issue that kept him out from November until March, ‘The Great Dane’ has been lights-out, posting more shutouts (three) than three-goal games (one). Ole’ Freddie has just 12 fewer appearances in the postseason (62) than his platoon mate has in his entire NHL career, and his coach has used him sparingly for the express purpose of a heavy playoff workload.

In the opposite crease, Semyon Varlamov has turned back the clock 10 years to when Roy first coached him. Then, Varlamov won 41 games and was a Vezina runner-up. Now, he’s 8-1-1 with a 2.09 GAA since March 1, a run of form that carried New York into the playoffs. Ilya Sorokin has bounced back from a 3-6 March to return to his best in April (.932 SV% in four starts). When he’s on, he might be the best goalie in the world. Roy went with Varlamov for Monday’s playoff clincher, but he’s not crazy enough to bench Sorokin for good. Right?

Injuries

The Canes aren’t dealing with any injury woes at the moment. They played it safe by scratching veterans for a recent game with the Blues. They’ll do the same during a meaningless season finale and have stayed relatively healthy.

For the Islanders, Mayfield is done for the year and continues to be replaced by Reilly, but the more pressing concern is the upper-body injury Dobson suffered in Montreal last Thursday; he and Romanov had been the only constants on a blueline ravaged by injuries all season, and with Game 1 looming, the Isles need their No.1 defenseman more than ever.

Intangibles

The Hurricanes will take confidence from last year’s trip to the Conference Final. Since then, they added arguably the best player available during free agency in Orlov and again at the trade deadline in Guentzel. That doesn’t mean they’re playing without pressure.

Carolina is second only to the mighty Bruins in regular season points since Brind’Amour took over as coach, and their plucky, small-market appeal has long since worn off; any team this good for this long must win before it’s too late. That is especially true for the Hurricanes, whose vaunted depth would be hit hard by extensions for Guentzel and Chatfield in the offseason.

Though Carolina is in “win now” mode, the Islanders aren’t exactly playing with house money as their opponent. Dobson, Barzal, and Sorokin are centerpiece players, but Lou Lamoriello’s overly loyal contract extensions mean this aging team doesn’t have much potential to improve around them. Pelech and Lee are wearing down fast, and if the Isles are going to improve on Trotz’s consecutive final four finishes, it has to be soon. That’s easier said than done for a team that barely clears 90 points.

Series Prediction

Sorokin and the defiant Isles might frustrate Carolina during one of their home games, but their pestering style will otherwise fail to bother the deeper, better team. The Hurricanes will dominantly close the show at PNC Arena as a wary Eastern Conference looks on.

Hurricanes in five games.

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