Carolina Hurricanes come alive in chippy third period, find way past New Jersey Devils

Dmitry Orlov stood in the Carolina Hurricanes locker room Saturday with cotton stuffed up both nostrils, a frown on his face and some fire in his eyes.

One almost got the impression that if he had the opportunity to go one on one with Erik Haula of the New Jersey Devils in a Lenovo Center hallway somewhere close by, the gloves off, he would have jumped at the chance.

“I think my nose is broken,” Orlov said somberly.

And this was after a regular-season game in late December, not in April or May. For the Canes, it was the second game after the Christmas break and the second in two days with the Devils, the Metro Division leaders.

A day after a road loss to the Devils, the Hurricanes would not be denied Saturday at home, taking a 5-2 win that gave Rod Brind’Amour his 300th career coaching win.

That made it memorable, historically. That Jackson Blake had the winning goal for the Canes (22-13-1) made it memorable personally for the rookie forward.

“That’s a lot of wins, for sure,” Blake said, smiling, “I love playing for him,”

But what the sellout crowd likely will most remember about Saturday’s game was the nastiness of the third period, when things turned ugly and Orlov went after Haula for some immediate on-ice retribution.

With the score tied 2-2, after Sebastian Aho had tied it for Carolina, Devils forward Timo Meier banged into the Canes’ Martin Necas in the neutral zone. The knee-on-knee hit left Necas on the ice in pain, grabbing his leg, and had Canes fans in an uproar.

Meier was assessed a major for kneeing and a match penalty and Blake gave the Canes the lead with a power-play goal off a deflection of Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s shot — for Blake his first goal in 14 games, his eighth of the season and his fourth game-winner.

The worst of the ugliness was yet to come.

Orlov had scored with 30 seconds left in the second period for a 1-1 tie, getting off a bomb of a shot to beat Jake Allen. Soon after winger Jack Roslovic scored the first of his two goals to push the lead to 4-2, Haula came flying at Orlov behind the Carolina net — Orlov’s head the intended target, or so it appeared, to everyone but the officials.

Orlov went down behind the net as the players scuffled, the crowd in a frenzy, then slowly skated toward the bench. After grabbing a towel to clean off some blood, he turned and went after Haula — both were assessed roughing penalties.

“I think it was a dirty hit,” Orlov said. “I wasn’t happy about that. You play hard but you don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Brind’Amour stayed away from criticizing the refs’ judgment on the call, saying, “Whatever that was, yeah, that’s a tough one when a guy gets injured like that.”

The rest of the game was generally anticlimatic, Roslovic scored an empty-netter and goalie Dustin Tokarski earned his second win in three games with 21 saves, facing six shots in the third.

Roslovic had a three-point game, assisting on the Aho goal, and Seth Jarvis had his first career three-assist game. Defenseman Sean Walker, who has become more assertive offensively in recent games, had two assists for his first multi-point game with the Canes.

Before the shenanigans began, the Canes had a nice tribute for former defenseman Brett Pesce, who signed with New Jersey after last season and was making his first return to Raleigh. Pesce later took a puck in the face and left the ice bleeding, but soon returned, just as he often did with Carolina.

Walker had a simple explanation for what happened in the third.

“You step up for your teammates, you know?” he said. “But it was a great team effort, the whole night. I think we just played a solid game and frustrated them most of the night.”